Top Whiskey Picks For 2025

The Whiskey Reviewer does not convene an awards panel due to the logistics involved, but we do have an outlet for our team to voice opinions about the whiskeys that caught their eye during the previous year. Each active writer has the opportunity to name a choice in three categories.

Best New Whiskey: The best of the new stuff, limited only to releases new to 2025.

Best To Pass My Lips: Leaving aside the qualification of being new to 2025, this is the best pour the writer had during the course of the previous year.

Biggest Disappointment: The least impressive whiskey encountered by the writer that year.

Those choices are presented below, in order of seniority:

Richard Thomas, Owner Editor

Best New Whiskey: My year began with the best new whiskey from 2025, the Garrison Brothers Cowboy Bourbon 2025. The backstory on this line is that I have not personally had any Cowboy Bourbon since 2015, when I wrote up the second-ever release in the series. Hard to believe that was ten years ago! The Whiskey Reviewer had not touched on Cowboy Bourbon in general since 2017. Well, Cowboy Bourbon 2025 wowed me so much that I deeply regret not nagging the folks in Hye, Texas and their PR people to stay abreast of this label. It was good before, but great now.

Best To Pass My Lips: This was a year when I had to put considerable effort into reacquainting myself with a number of Buffalo Trace products for a book I wrote, so I was not able to pursue anything exotic. As a result, the best thing to pass my lips was also the only whiskey I gave an A+ grade to this past year, the Jack Daniel’s 14 Year Old. It’s amazing, I urge you to snag a bottle if you see it at anything like it’s $150 MSRP, and I can only pray that the next step in the JD age statement series does not come out as over-oaked.

Biggest Disappointment: My biggest disappointment of 2025 in whiskey was not a pour or a bottle, but a book. After reading Fawn Weaver’s Love and Whiskey, I felt like I had been sold a false bill of goods. After years–years!–of build up for what was strongly implied to be a biography of Jack Daniel’s mentor Nathan Green, the book instead turned out to be Weaver’s memoir of her research, her vague ruminations of interference (that never materialized) from Brown-Forman and her work on creating Uncle Nearest. The only thing about this book that is more disappointing than the bait and switch it presents is the wholesale failure of the mainstream media to call it out for what it was, and more importantly, what it was not.

Kurt Maitland, Deputy Editor

Best New Whiskey: This one is easy, Old Forester President’s Choice. Not that Old Forester producing a great whiskey is a surprise, but I did not realize how much I loved this release and how much it stood out until I looked back at the year.

Best To Pass My Lips: There were a few standouts so I’m going to cheat and do a few picks. First, the Red Spot 31 Year Old, bottled for the Whisky Exchange (one of the juiciest Irish whiskies I’ve ever tasted). It was jammy (a term I’m borrowing from the Brits) in a way that old Scotches were in their golden period. Michter’s 25 Year Old (always a highlight when it hits the market) got very high marks too, and a Highland Park independent bottling distilled in 1998 that I had at the Aloha Bar in Tokyo really stands out.

Biggest Disappointment: I hate to say it, but the new Glen Scotia 15 Year Old. It’s great brand that I have a personal history with (I got a tour there on my first trip to Campbeltown and only got that because of the intercession of Richard Paterson, but that is a story for another time) that has been a bit of a hidden gem in Scotch Whisky. It has been beginning to shine, but something about this release fell flat for me.

Randall H. Borkus, Senior Contributor

Best New Whiskey: This year for my best new whiskey I’m giving the nod to Very Old St. Nick Christmas Dream,  as it truly has the edge in layered flavor complexity. This is an 8 Year Old Kentucky bourbon whiskey distilled and bottled at Preservation Distillery using their wheated mash bill. There were approximately 300 bottles yielded from two separate barrels. Preservation Distillery is known for experimenting with different toast and char levels to create the varying flavor profiles and they really hit the mark here!

Best To Pass My Lips: My best pour from 2025 was the Bladnoch 30 Year Old single malt. Coming from a distillery is located in the Lowlands Whisky Region, this is a very limited-edition bottling drawn from just two casks, an Oloroso sherry cask and Moscatel wine cask. The whisky is non-chill filtered, no color is added, and it’s bottled at 45.5% ABV.

Biggest Disappointment: I regularly acquire the annual releases of the Woodford Reserve Master’s Collection, and I was surprised that my biggest disappointment was the Woodford Reserve Master’s Collection 2025 (Chinkapin Aged). I brought it to a bottle share, and found my disappointment was widely shared. We thought it over-oaked and too dry.

David Levine, Contributor

Best New Whiskey: Blade & Bow 30 Year Old KSBW. My vote was going to be Found North Snow Day 15 Year Old until the last minute, when the Blade & Bow 30 Year Old blew me away and changed my mind. This immediately enters my top five bourbons I’ve ever tasted. It is a 30-year-old bourbon that isn’t remotely oaky, has immense flavor from nose to finish, with a backstory that adds through facts rather than distracts through marketing BS. This is the rarest of calls for me: a super-premium ($1,200) whiskey that is 100% worth the price.

Best To Pass My Lips: Kyrö 100% Malted Rye Whisky. In a year where ryes dominate my best-of lists, this stood out most of all. Easily accessible core releases shouldn’t be this good…it should be reserved for limited editions and one-offs. And yet, this is where you start your Kyrö journey. The depth of flavor, richness of mouthfeel, and near-perfect balance of highlighting rye was magical. It took me somewhere away from “American rye,” like I was drinking in Finland, watching the rye grow during a 20-hours-of-sunlight day. Special shout-out goes to Hotaling’s Old Potrero Single Barrel Straight Rye Whiskey Cask #OP9-15, also 100% malted rye. If that weren’t a single barrel it would have at least tied Kyrö for this one.

Biggest Disappointment: Found North Goldfinch. Goldfinch wasn’t the worst thing I tasted this year, not by a longshot. Rather, it’s a matter of expectation vs. execution. I generally like Sauternes finishes, and I have great faith in the Found North team (their Snow Day, Hover Hawk, and Hell Diver were all excellent 2025 releases). This was just a misfire. Unbalanced, too heavy on one note, and that note became a bit sulfurous. From talking to Sammy Karachi, Head Blender and original Found North team member, this release was more polarizing than expected, so at least I’m not alone. Safe to say it’s an exception, and they’ve already moved on to another cracking blend.

Douglas Fraser, Contributor

Best New Whiskey: Malty Verse Wreck in Kentucky Cask# 31020233. The marketing and storytelling behind this whiskey is awesome. The whole multiverse thing adds a diverse story to the line. On the nose is an aroma of nuttiness. Once you break through, the whiskey opens to notes of sweet corn, cinnamon, banana bread, oak, and gentle baking spices. The palate drastically changes course with a very spicy mouth feel. This is accompanied by notes of more corn sweetness, rye spice, cinnamon oak, and of course cracked pepper. The finish is long and lingers on the palate with notes of oak and continued spice.

Best To Pass My Lips: Lindores Abbey Single Malt MCDXCIV. For a younger single malt, this dram packs a lot of flavor. Citrus fruits and lemon zest attack the nose followed by notes of green apple, banana, vanilla, cereal, and some floral characteristics. The palate is rather creamy with similar notes of ripe citrus fruits, vanilla, oats, and cracked pepper. The finish is medium in length with notes of dried fruits, apples, and vanilla. However, the pepper lingers on and on.

Biggest Disappointment: Blanton’s Gold. Honestly, I don’t get it. I think the regular line of Blantons is a solid bourbon, but the Gold line is so lackluster. To me, it was not refined nor well-rounded. Maybe it was just the barrel I tasted, but it left me disappointed. I don’t plan on seeking that again.

Genevieve Jacot-Guillarmod, Contributor

Best To Pass My Lips: Bushmills 21 Year Old. Choosing a single “best” whisky for this category is never straightforward, as my preferences tend to shift with mood, context, and occasion. So, I’ve settled on a whisky I tasted this year that really stood out, and which proved unusually memorable. Bushmills 21 Year Old is a whiskey which has kept popping into my head when friends ask for recommendations, or when I found myself thinking about what I’d genuinely enjoyed most. From the very first nosing, this Irish single malt caught my attention with an expressive, fruit-forward profile, with lovely notes of kiwi and other tropical fruits.

Biggest Disappointment: Nc’nean Organic Single Malt was, unfortunately, my biggest disappointment of the year. This was a whisky that had been on my radar for a long time. I really like their sustainability-focused ethos and their visually striking bottle. It’s also a whisky that’s really hard to find where I live. I finally tasted it in Scotland this year, at The Old Forge in Inverie, which is often described as the UK’s remotest pub. Inverie is accessible either by ferry, or by hiking about 25km from Kinloch Hourn. I hiked from Kinloch Hourn for a dram (two, actually!) at the pub, and then hiked back again.

Sadly, it didn’t live up to my anticipation. Perhaps this is often the case when one’s been anticipating something for a great deal of time. It wasn’t awful, but the dram struck me as unexpectedly harsh and bright. Perhaps its young age is to blame, and with more time this could become something to revisit.

To be fair, there may well have been other mitigating factors at play too. The whisky was also served in a tumbler rather than a glencairn, which likely diminished my ability to fully appreciate what this whisky has to offer. Even so, it was a let-down. In my experience, long hikes usually heighten one’s appreciation of really simple pleasures and even food and drink one might normally dismiss (hot showers are amazing, and instant noodles can seem delicious after a long day of hiking!). That effect didn’t rescue this whisky for me. After trekking 25km over a mountain pass and years of curiosity, I found this whisky disappointing when I finally tasted it.