Atlanta’s Old Fourth Distillery is an odd, special case, when it comes to whiskey. Their newly released, single barrel Bottled in Bond (BiB) Bourbon has been an immediate critical hit, winning a double gold medal at the 2019 World Spirits Competition in San Francisco. That this whiskey is sourced from MGP of Indiana isn’t terribly surprising—many young distilleries get their bourbon and rye from the massive factory that is MGP. What’s weird is that Old Fourth Ward first purchased this whiskey from MGP four years ago and then took it upon themselves to age the spirit in their own bonded rickhouse. It begs the question: Who deserves more of the plaudits for how well this bourbon turned out? The guys in Indiana who distilled it, or the guys in Atlanta who aged it for four years and guided it into the attractive bottle in which it now resides? It’s something that I’ve never really heard of a distillery doing: Contracting white whiskey (due to a lack of distilling capacity), and then taking over the aging process on their own.
