2021 Yellowstone Limited Edition Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey 750ml

The 2021 Yellowstone Limited Edition Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey is a 101 proof (50.5% ABV) blend of select 7-year Kentucky straight bourbon barrels finished in Italian Amarone wine casks and hand-selected 15-year Kentucky straight bourbon, limited to 22,500 bottles.

Amarone is one of Italy's most prized red wines, and its casks gave Master Distiller Stephen Beam exactly the depth he was after. “Amarone is a rich, red wine that — much like bourbon — takes time and patience to craft and requires at least two years in oak casks to age,” Beam said of the release. “Finishing select barrels in these Amarone casks brings notes of fresh cracked pepper and tobacco, as well as hints of black cherry, fig and dark chocolate to the classic bourbon notes of caramel, vanilla and hints of citrus.” The Amarone-finished 7-year barrels were then married with unfinished 15-year bourbon, stacking wine-dark fruit over serious age.

Released nationwide beginning in July 2021 in the series' custom embossed bottle with natural cork and the 2021 Limited Edition emblem on the label, the edition ran 7,500 three-bottle cases — a 50% production increase over the 2020 release, and still a tightly allocated 22,500 bottles nationwide. The pairing of a wine-finished younger bourbon with unfinished extra-aged stock became a signature structure Beam would refine again the following year.

Beam described the finish — oxidized fruit, cherry, and black currant — as “reminiscent of pre-Prohibition whiskeys,” a fitting flourish for a brand founded in 1872 and named for America's first national park. Within the Limited Edition series, 2021 marks the start of the Italian wine cask chapter that would continue with Marsala Superiore in 2022, and it remains the only Amarone-finished release in the Limited Edition series — a single-year statement for collectors of wine-finished Kentucky straight bourbon, from a seventh-generation distiller working a 149-year-old family name.

• Size: 750ml
• Proof: 101 (50.5% ABV)
• Age: Blend of 7-year (Amarone cask finished) and 15-year bourbons
• Origin: Kentucky
• Distillery: Limestone Branch Distillery, Lebanon, KY (bottler)
• Whiskey Type: Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey — Amarone cask finish
• Cask/Cooperage: Italian Amarone red wine casks (7-year component)
• Series: Yellowstone Limited Edition — 2021 release (annual since 2015)
• Production: 22,500 bottles (7,500 three-bottle cases)
• Tasting Notes: Cracked pepper, tobacco, black cherry, fig, dark chocolate over caramel and vanilla; finish of oxidized fruit, cherry, black currant