Blanton's Distillery

Single Barrel Bourbon began with Blanton's in 1984. Nearing retirement, Master Distiller Elmer T. Lee was tasked with creating a bourbon of exceptionally high quality. With careful thought, he recalled the early days of his career in the late 1940s, when he worked under Colonel Albert B. Blanton . Colonel Blanton was the distillery's president until 1952. Mr. Lee remembered that when Colonel Blanton entertained dignitaries and other important guests, he would hand-select "honey barrels" from the center cut of Warehouse H and have that bourbon bottled one barrel at a time. As a tribute to Colonel Blanton's long-standing tradition, Elmer T. Lee decided to name this new bourbon "Blanton's Single Barrel."

Elmer T. Lee introduced Blanton's single-barrel bourbon to the world a year before his retirement. In doing so, he revolutionized the industry by creating the "super-premium" bourbon category with the world's first single-barrel bourbon. This idea was radical at the time because it challenged most people's understanding of what bourbon was. Today, most distilleries offer one or more single-barrel bottlings, but Blanton's was the first, and we still believe it's the best single-barrel bourbon on the market.

The horse and jockey depicted on the tops of the bottle stoppers are now a registered trademark of Blanton's Single Barrel Bourbon. Kentucky's rich horse heritage and tradition are paralleled by that of bourbon. This is our way of honoring that Kentucky heritage. In early 1999, a collector's set of eight different stoppers was produced. The set features a horse and jockey in various strides and poses that resemble the stages of a horse race, from start to finish. Each stopper is marked with a single letter that spells out Blanton's when the set is complete. The final stopper, marked with an "S," always finishes the race with a victory!