April 2 Update—Thank you for joining The Bourbon Review and Tito Belvedere for April Fools’ Day! We’ll see you next year—if not sooner.
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Henry McKenna parent company Heaven Hill says they’re making changes to the label and designations of the award-winning Henry McKenna Single Barrel Bourbon, starting today, April 1.
McKenna single barrel has recently been in the news for several prestigious awards, once again catapulting it into the spotlight for collectors and devotees. Because of this, Heaven Hill is making some changes.
“We want to make sure everyone can enjoy Henry McKenna Bottled in Bond 10-Year Single Barrel Kentucky Straight Bourbon,” explained senior communications manager Josh Hafer, “so we’re making some changes to the formula to increase distribution.”
Starting this month, Henry McKenna Single Barrel will no longer be a 10-year whiskey, nor a bottled-in-bond whiskey, nor a single barrel whiskey. It will also be dropping its designations for “Kentucky,” “straight,” and “bourbon.”
“You can get whiskey in a lot more hands if you’re willing to make a couple of changes,” explained new master distiller Conor O’Driscoll. “Just by dropping the single barrel designation, for instance, we get an extra 3 percent out of the supply.”
“You don’t really need to wait 10 years for this kind of flavor,” O’Driscoll explained, “and once you lose the Bottled-in-Bond designation, source some of it from outside of Kentucky, and use just a little blending whiskey, you’re getting pretty much the same flavor, but nearly 30 percent more supply.”
In order to balance out the costs of the changes, Heaven Hill says the price for McKenna, which will now be known as “McKenna Award Winner Whiskey,” will be around $75 plus any state and local taxes.
Heaven Hill says bottles should be on shelves within the week. Their sales team is actively removing older bottles from shelves as we speak, and they say they’ll be mixing recovered bottles into the new patent-pending vatting process for McKenna Award Winner.
