Woodford Reserve Bottling Dates

[ProofPositive]

How does one go about determining the bottling date of Woodford Reserve? I have often read on here that the older bottlings are somewhat preferred over the more recent ones. Over the weekend, I found a dusty bottle of WR that appears to have been there for some time. Thanks for any assistance, or, guidance to a previous thread which has already addressed this subject matter.

[cowdery]

What you have to do first is line-up the batch number and the distiller's signature, as they started over when Chris Morris took over. Anything with a Chris Morris signature is pretty recent. The only significant milestone in the Lincoln Henderson era is when the switched over to using some of the pot-still Woodford whiskey in every bottle, which began in May, 2003, with batch number 90.

That said, there really is no consensus as to what is the "best" Woodford, despite quite a bit of agreement that Woodford seems to vary more from batch to batch than some other products.

It would be interesting, I think, to compare a pre-batch 90 Lincoln Henderson to a post-batch 90 Lincoln Henderson and also to a modern Chris Morris, just to see how much they do vary.

At about the same time they switched to Chris's signature they also added bottling capacity, which increased the batch size from 1,000 cases to about 5,000 cases, which should have improved consistency.

[jeff]

To add to Chuck's response, I believe they also use a separate batch number sequence for each size bottle too. So a batch number 45 of a 750ml wouldn't be the same bourbon as a batch 45 of a liter bottle, etc...

[HighTower]

To add to Chuck's response, I believe they also use a separate batch number sequence for each size bottle too. So a batch number 45 of a 750ml wouldn't be the same bourbon as a batch 45 of a liter bottle, etc...

That would probably explain why we received bottles from batch "1" in Australia....(700mL bottles opposed to 750mL).....it only first showed up on our shores late 1999 / early 2000. The first batch we received over here opposed to the first batch that was made. They are Lincoln Henderson bottles.

Scott