The Ultimate 12-Year Bourbon Blind: Weller 12 vs Van Winkle 12 vs King of Kentucky

King of Kentucky Bourbon

There are bourbon blinds.

And then there are bourbon blinds where you look at the bottles sitting on the table beforehand and think:

Well, this was probably financially irresponsible.

For this episode of Tortured Bourbon, B and Heather decided to answer a question bourbon drinkers argue about constantly:

What happens when you remove the label from some of the most desirable 12-year bourbons in America?

No bottle prestige.

No allocation hype.

No secondary-market pricing.

No staring at a bottle of Van Winkle and suddenly discovering seventeen tasting notes because you know what it costs.

Just whiskey in a glass.

So we assembled what may be our most ridiculous 12-year bourbon blind tasting yet:

W.L. Weller 12 Year. Van Winkle Special Reserve 12 Year Lot B. 1792 Aged Twelve Years. Blade & Bow 12-Year-Old Solera Reserve. And King of Kentucky Small Batch Batch 2.

Five bourbons.

Twelve years on every label.

Very different proofs.

Very different production methods.

Very different levels of bourbon insanity.

And one question:

Can we find the King?

The Problem With Tasting Expensive Bourbon

Bourbon people like to believe we are immune to marketing.

We are not.

Put an ordinary-looking sample bottle in front of someone and tell them it contains a $40 bourbon, and they'll taste bourbon.

Put Van Winkle on the label and suddenly they're detecting hand-stitched leather, antique mahogany, tobacco from Winston Churchill's personal humidor and a faint memory of Christmas at grandmother's house in 1987.

Bourbon is weird.

That's exactly why we love blind tastings.

Heather doesn't know which bottle is supposed to win.

B doesn't get to explain why the age, proof, warehouse, mash bill and alignment of Saturn mean one bottle should be better.

Heather tastes it.

B overthinks it.

Nature remains in balance.

This time, however, we stacked the deck with bottles carrying some serious reputations.

W.L. Weller 12 Year

If you've spent any time hunting bourbon, Weller 12 probably needs very little introduction.

Produced by Buffalo Trace, W.L. Weller is built around a wheated bourbon mash, replacing rye with wheat as the secondary grain. Buffalo Trace credits William Larue Weller with pioneering that softer style of bourbon, and the Weller name has become one of the most recognizable—and chased—names in American whiskey. Buffalo Trace Distillery

Weller 12 takes that basic idea and lets it sit in oak for a dozen years before bottling at 90 proof.

And that's what makes it particularly interesting in this blind.

It isn't going to overpower anything with proof.

It has to survive on balance, maturity and flavor.

More importantly, Weller and Van Winkle share that wheated-bourbon family resemblance.

Which leads directly to Bottle Number Two.

Van Winkle Special Reserve 12 Year — Lot B

Oh, yes.

Van Winkle 12.

The bottle that can transform otherwise normal adults into people willing to stand outside a liquor store before sunrise.

Van Winkle Special Reserve 12 Year is a wheated Kentucky straight bourbon bottled at 90.4 proof. Buffalo Trace describes its profile around dried fruit, cocoa, honey, oak and tobacco, with a dry, balanced finish. Buffalo Trace Distillery

In North Carolina, its official ABC price is currently $199.95.

Finding one sitting peacefully on a shelf at that price?

That's a different discussion entirely. ABC2

And that reputation creates the perfect blind-tasting question:

Is Van Winkle 12 actually dramatically better than Weller 12 when you don't know which is which?

That is the kind of question capable of starting a fight in a bourbon Facebook group before breakfast.

Naturally, we poured them together.

1792 Aged Twelve Years

Then comes the bottle that doesn't receive nearly the same amount of hysteria.

1792 Aged Twelve Years comes from Barton 1792 Distillery and checks in at 96.6 proof.

Unlike the two wheated Buffalo Trace bourbons, 1792 occupies the spicier side of the bourbon world. The brand has long been associated with a higher-rye profile, though the exact mash bill isn't officially disclosed. The 12-year expression brings vanilla, cocoa and mature oak into the picture, with fruit and a lingering smoky character. Breaking Bourbon

And this is exactly the kind of bottle we love putting into a blind.

Because nobody walks into this tasting expecting 1792 to receive the same amount of worship as Van Winkle.

But the glass doesn't know that.

Neither does Heather.

Blade & Bow 12-Year-Old Solera Reserve

Then somebody at Blade & Bow apparently looked at a normal 12-year bourbon and said:

This isn't complicated enough.

Released in 2026, Blade & Bow 12-Year-Old Solera Reserve starts with mature Kentucky bourbon and uses a multi-vat Solera finishing and blending process influenced by Cognac, Bordeaux, Moscatel and Port vessels.

It's bottled at 104 proof. Whiskey Reviewer

So now we have mature bourbon, wine influence, Cognac influence, fruit, oak, tannin and a Solera-style process all fighting for space in the same glass.

That's either going to make Blade & Bow incredibly easy to identify...

...or we're about to embarrass ourselves publicly.

Both are acceptable outcomes at Tortured Bourbon.

At roughly $60–$65 suggested/regulated retail pricing, Blade & Bow also enters this fight at a dramatically different price point from some of the allocated monsters sitting beside it. Whiskey Reviewer

And that matters.

Because if we're judging what is actually in the glass, price doesn't get a vote.

And Then There's King of Kentucky

Every blind needs a villain.

Or a hero.

Or in this case, apparently royalty.

Sitting directly in the middle of this tasting is King of Kentucky Small Batch Batch 2.

Brown-Forman introduced the limited Small Batch collection in 2026, with three different proof points. Batch 2 is bottled at 107.5 proof, carries a 12-year age statement, is non-chill filtered, and draws from mature barrels reportedly spanning 12 to 18 years. Distiller - The Liquor Expert

The suggested retail price was approximately $299, and North Carolina lists Batch 2 at 107.5 proof as part of the 2026 release. ABC2

King of Kentucky already carries one of the biggest reputations in modern bourbon.

So this bottle enters the tasting with a giant target taped to it.

Which raises the question that became the entire theme of the episode:

CAN WE FIND THE KING?

Take away the giant bottle.

Take away the King of Kentucky label.

Take away the price.

Take away the Brown-Forman pedigree.

Pour it into the same glass as everything else.

Does it still announce itself as King of Kentucky?

Or does one of the supposedly lesser bottles steal the crown?

This Is Why Bourbon Should Be Tasted Blind

The five bottles couldn't be more different despite sharing the same 12-year number.

We have two wheated bourbons.

A higher-rye-style Barton bourbon.

A 104-proof Solera-influenced whiskey.

And a 107.5-proof limited Brown-Forman release built from seriously mature stocks.

On paper, everyone can pick a winner.

But we're not drinking paper.

And we're definitely not scoring the secondary market.

We tasted each bourbon without knowing what was in the glass, worked through the nose, palate and finish, argued about the things B and Heather inevitably argue about, and then ranked them using the only scientifically validated bourbon rating system known to man:

Piddlin' → Bless Your Heart → That Dog Will Hunt → Hush Your Mouth → Cock of the Walk.

Peer reviewed?

Absolutely not.

More entertaining than a 100-point scale?

Without question.

Weller vs Van Winkle vs King of Kentucky: Which 12-Year Bourbon Wins?

That's the part we're not spoiling here.

Because this blind produced exactly the reason we keep doing these things.

Labels matter right up until you cover them.

Price matters right up until nobody knows the price.

Rarity matters until a bourbon that sat peacefully on an ABC shelf gets poured beside something people chase across three states.

Then there's nowhere left to hide.

The whiskey has to perform.

So pour yourself something good and watch The Ultimate 12-Year Bourbon Blind Tasting as B and Heather work through Weller 12, Van Winkle 12 Lot B, 1792 Aged Twelve Years, Blade & Bow 12-Year Solera Reserve and King of Kentucky Batch 2.

Can we identify the King?

Does Van Winkle live up to the insanity?

Can Weller hang with its much more famous cousin?

Does Blade & Bow's Solera process jump out of the glass?

Can 1792 crash the allocated-bourbon party?

And most importantly...

Which bottle would we actually want to drink?

That's what matters.

Not the shelf.

Not the internet.

Not the resale price.

The glass.

We suffer through bourbon so you don't have to.