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History In A Bottle Day 7: Evan Williams Single Barrel 2002 KWM Cask

Posted on December 7, 2022

This post is Bonus Content. It has information on one of the KWM Cask bottles that are featured on the back of our 2022 KWM Whisky Calendar box. You can find the blog post for the mini bottle for Day Seven of our Whisky Calendar here.

by Andrew

We’ve bottled at least one, but possibly two different Evan Williams KWM Single Barrels over the years. I can’t be 100% sure of this, but my recollection is there were two. The whiskey would have been chosen from a selection of 4-6 similar casks, and when bottled the empty barrel was sent to KWM to be put on display. In the dry Alberta climate, we were usually lucky to get 6 months out of one of these casks before the hoops started to slink and the staves pulled apart. It would be a few more years until we started working with local breweries and distilleries to give these barrels a second life.

At the time we sold the whiskey for about $50, which is a phenomenal price for a 10-year-old single-barrel bourbon in this day and age. Even then it was a hot commodity, hence the reason why I am so confident we bottled two… They would have been the 2nd and 3rd KWM Single Barrel American whiskies bottled by KWM, but far from the last. Over the years we bottled a couple of whiskies each from Wyoming, Elijah Craig and Jefferson’s (including an Ocean Aged at Sea). We also bottled a Bernheim and currently have single barrels from Woodford and Kentucky Spirits in the shop. What’s next? Time will tell!