Old Hoffman 6 Year Bourbon Review

Some bottles you hunt down. This one found me.

I walked into my local shop actually looking for the Red Top Rye Bourbon. The owner — who has never once steered me toward a shelf-warmer just to move it — stopped me and told me to grab the bourbon instead. I'm usually wary of that move. You ask for a specific bottle a store doesn't have, and suddenly you're being walked over to whatever they're overstocked on. This wasn't that. He was right, and I've been thinking about the pour ever since.

Here's what makes the name worth knowing. Old Hoffman isn't a new brand dressed up in old-timey serif type. It's a genuinely old one, and the address behind it is one of the quietly important ones in bourbon.

The Hoffman Distillery went up in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky in the late 1800s, and the Old Hoffman label first appeared around 1890. It went bankrupt and closed in the years before Prohibition, was rebuilt after Repeal by the Ripy brothers — the same Ripy family whose name runs all through Lawrenceburg distilling, including the ground that became Wild Turkey — and eventually became the distillery that created Ezra Brooks before shutting down again in 1979.

Then the interesting part. In 1983, Julian Van Winkle III bought the dormant Hoffman distillery and renamed it Commonwealth. For close to two decades, that's where the Van Winkle family whiskey was bottled — Old Rip Van Winkle plus a handful of export and white-label brands, including a wheated 10-year called Old Commonwealth built to the same spec as the Van Winkle 10. Julian didn't close the place until 2002, when he moved the family name over to Buffalo Trace and the Pappy legend went supernova.

So the ground this bottle comes from is, more or less, a Pappy origin site. Three partners bought the property in 2019 to revive it as Old Commonwealth Distillery, and their first release in late 2024 reportedly sold out online in seconds. Old Hoffman is the next brand back off that shelf — returning in 2026 with its original label artwork intact. That's a lot of history riding on a $65 bottle. The good news is the liquid holds its end up.

The Bottle

Distillery: Old Commonwealth (Lawrenceburg, KY)

Release: 2026

Classification: Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

Proof: 100 (50% ABV)

Age: 6 Years

Mash Bill: 78% Corn, 10% Rye, 12% Malted Barley — a traditional, rye-touched recipe, and notably not the wheated formula the Van Winkles once bottled on this same ground

MSRP: $65

Tasting Notes

First Impression: Warm cinnamon leads the nose, wrapped in soft butterscotch, with a ripe stone-fruit sweetness — think peach and apricot — sitting just underneath.

On the Palate: Dark cherry arrives first, then a rich vanilla custard fills out the middle before toffee brings a chewy, almost dessert-like sweetness.

The Last Sip: That cinnamon circles back on the finish alongside brown sugar, riding out on a buttery, round texture that lingers without a hint of harshness.

Final Thoughts

I'll be honest: I walked in knowing almost nothing about Old Hoffman, and I walked out a believer. For a 6-year bourbon at 100 proof, this drinks with a richness and balance that punches above its age statement — cherry, custard, and toffee up front, cinnamon and brown sugar on the way out, and no rough patches to apologize for.

It's worth pointing out this isn't a wheated bourbon. That 10% rye in the mash bill makes it a different animal from the Old Commonwealth wheaters Julian Van Winkle once bottled here. Judge it on its own terms and it stands up easily.

The $65 ask is real money for a 6-year, but between what's in the glass and the story behind the label, I don't feel talked into anything — and coming from a recommendation I was ready to be skeptical of, that's saying something. Word is a 10-year is on the way, and I'm already in line for it.

For a brand that spent a century getting knocked down and rebuilt on one of the most storied patches of dirt in Kentucky, this is a strong way to come back.

🟢 Buy