// Designation · Bourbon / Rye
Small Batch
Whiskey blended from a limited, curated group of barrels; an industry term with no fixed legal batch size, describing a blending approach rather than a recipe or flavor profile.
At a Glance
- Category
- Bourbon, Rye
- Flavor Direction
- Oak & Wood, Sweet & Dessert-Like
What Makes It Different?
- "Small batch" indicates the whiskey was created by blending together a deliberately limited number of barrels, rather than the very large-scale blending some higher-volume brands use; but there is no statutory or industry-wide definition of exactly how many barrels qualifies.
- Because the term isn't legally defined, "small batch" can mean a handful of barrels at one distillery and several hundred at another; it's worth treating it as a marketing and production term rather than a guarantee of a particular size or style.
Small batch describes a blending approach, not a mash bill; it says nothing on its own about whether the underlying whiskey is a traditional, wheated, or high-rye bourbon (or a rye), and flavor tendencies vary accordingly.
Flavor Profile
Production
A blending choice made at the very end of the process -- barrels are selected and married together in a deliberately limited group rather than a distillery's full, larger-scale blending vat. Bottle matches here come from a bottle's own name explicitly naming it a small batch release, not an independent barrel-count field -- see this style's own Explore Bottles section for that caveat. See Process for how the same mash bill and barrel choices upstream of this step shape what ends up in that group of barrels to begin with.
Explore Bottles
18 real bottles in our Distillery Directory carry this designation in the bottle's own name -- we don't have an independent field confirming batch size or barrel count, so this is based on what the bottle calls itself, not a verified count.
Try It Yourself
Trying a small batch? Use the Guided Tasting experience to walk through aroma, palate, and finish while it's actually in the glass -- a more useful way to learn what this style tends toward than reading about it alone.