For most of the 20th century, you basically couldn't buy this bourbon in the country that makes it.

Named after a hunting trip, built by Jimmy Russell's 70-year career, and still just the standard bottle — not a limited release.

A longtime Heaven Hill skeptic gets won over by Double Mash, a new 9-year, 100-proof Bottled-in-Bond blend of the distillery's rye-recipe and wheated bourbon mash bills — verdict: Buy.

Not every bourbon needs to be barrel proof, limited edition, or wrapped in a story about hunting down the last bottle on the shelf. Some have earned their place simply by showing up year after year and doing exactly what they're supposed to do.

Buffalo Trace itself has one of the longest continuous whiskey-making histories in America. The distillery traces its roots back to the late 1700s, when travelers and herds of buffalo carved paths across the Kentucky frontier to the banks of the Kentucky River.

Bardstown built its name blending sourced whiskey out in the open. The Origin Series finally answers the question hanging over the place: what does Bardstown taste like when it's entirely Bardstown?

Founded in 1885, gutted by a 1918 fire and then Prohibition, Green River spent most of a century as a footnote. This rye is part of the second act, and it drinks like a distillery with something to prove.