Bottle Details
- DISTILLER: Maker’s Mark Distillery
- TYPE: Bourbon
- MASH BILL: 70% Corn | 16% Wheat | 14% Malted Barley
- AGE: 11 years (49% 11-year-old, 33% 12-year-old and 18% 14-year-old)
- YEAR: 2026
- PROOF: 112.1 (56.5% ABV)
- AVAILABILITY: September 1 at select U.S. retailers nationwide, followed by availability in the U.K., Germany, Korea, Japan, Australia and Global Travel Retail later this year into 2027.
- MSRP: $175 for 700ml
- BUY ONLINE: Not available online at Maker’s Mark
TASTING NOTES
NOSE: Honey drizzled onto toasted wheat bread leads before moving toward caramel and mocha icing. Cinnamon and expressed orange peel hover at the top of the glass while oak and ethanol lie low, waiting to be summoned for a sip. I haven’t used “quality fruit cake” as a descriptor in a long time, but it’s there alongside cooked wheat and creamed corn.
PALATE: It front loads the mouth with baking spice and toasted oak before commingling campfire, cigar leaf, nougat, dried dates, cinnamon red hots and semi-sweet chocolate. It drinks a little hotter than its 112 proof, but that warmth holds at a pleasant simmer, even after repeated sips.
FINISH: Medium length, barely warming and richly honeyed.
Reviewer’s Verdict
RATING: Bar. Try before you buy. $175 is not an insignificant price.
WORTH THE PRICE: Is the buyer getting great whiskey? To my palate, yes. Will heaps of buyers spend this much for Cellar Aged 2026? No question. Maker’s has helped make bourbon popular globally with its affordable and reliable flagship bottle. Ergo, the brand deserves to strut its stuff and charge a premium for a terrific and rare release. Just because this isn’t in my personal price range doesn’t mean it’s not “worth the price.”
WHO IT’S FOR: Devoted Maker’s Mark fans and lovers of wheated bourbons. And bigger budget bourbon buyers, of course. If you’ve got the expendable skrilla to pour this for your good friends, do it. It’s as good as Maker’s Mark gets, so get ya some if you want to see experience that.
REVIEWER’S VERDICT: It’s easy to get to the point here: Two of the many smart things Maker’s Mark has done to innovate on its legendary flagship is boosting both age and proof. Cellar Aged expresses each exceptionally well by managing this bourbon’s power and restraint.
Wheated bourbons in general come alive for me at 100 proof and higher. To push its whiskey past that number and age it further using its 59 degree “whisky cellar” opens a lot of possibilities for boosting depth, structure and complexity without an abundance of tannin. Frankly, tannin is almost non-existent in this.
Though it’s likely that 14-year-old bourbon will never be bottled as is, I’d love to taste it alone to better understand its role in giving this release real balance and bones. In this release, teenage bourbon will likely remain a flavor lever and never a flavor leader because doing so risks countering Maker’s longstanding goal of making bourbons approachable at any age or price. Bill Samuel’s, Jr., describes that as result as, “Yummy.” And it’s arguably impossible to argue against yummy.
Disclaimer
This bottle found its way to us compliments of the brand. What ends up on the page is ours alone — and they knew that going in. Around here, honesty isn’t a policy. It’s the whole damn point.
About Our Rating System
Bourbon & Banter uses a three-tier rating system created over a decade ago: Bottle, Bar, or Bust.
- 🍾 Bottle — Buy it. This one deserves a place in your cabinet. (Approximate equivalent: 85 and above on a 100-point scale)
- 🥃 Bar — Worth trying, but not necessarily worth owning. Find it at a bar before committing to a bottle. (Approximate equivalent: 70–84)
- 💀 Bust — Skip it. Life is too short and your shelf space too valuable. (Approximate equivalent: below 70)
Numeric scores imply a precision that doesn’t exist — and most publications never score below 80, making half the scale meaningless. We’d rather answer the question that actually matters: buy it, try it at a bar before you buy, or skip it. The approximate equivalents above are for reference only.
