The B-Batch Bracket: Running Elijah Craig Barrel Proof, 2017–2024

There are bourbons you evaluate and bourbons you enter into a bracket, and the Elijah Craig Barrel Proof line has long belonged to the second kind. The B-batch — the May release that anchors each year's spring column — is the one my team keeps circling back to, and running the 2017–2024 run as a tournament is less a gimmick than an honest admission: the differences between these batches are real…