Jack Daniel's Single Malt and Four Roses' Honey Cask

September opens with a strange scoreboard. The only whiskey that went genuinely nationwide this week came from America's biggest whiskey maker, and it isn't a bourbon: Jack Daniel's pushed its sherry-finished single malt to all 50 states. Every bourbon that made news, from Four Roses' honey-cask experiment to Beam's bowling pin decanter, is locked behind a distillery door, a festival gate, or a lottery.

• Jack Daniel's took its American Single Malt nationwide on August 25, moving the Oloroso-finished, 90-proof whiskey from travel retail to an annual U.S. release at $74.99¹
• Four Roses announced Experimental Series No. 002, a honey cask finished bourbon at 104 proof, arriving September 18 at its two visitor centers only²
• Jim Beam revived the Ten Pin Bottle, a 1950s bowling pin decanter reborn with 10-year, 100-proof bourbon, distillery-only at $124.99³
• Starlight opened a lottery for its 10-Year Mizunara Reserve, 250 bottles of cask-strength Indiana bourbon finished in ancient Japanese oak⁴
• Buffalo Trace announced its On Tour series returns to four cities this fall, with free registration opening September 2⁵

The Jack Daniel Distillery announced on August 25 that its American Single Malt is going nationwide this fall, an annual limited release in one-liter bottles at 90 proof and $74.99¹. Until now the whiskey lived only in select duty-free shops. The liquid is Lynchburg through and through: 100% malted barley, ground, fermented, and distilled on site, mellowed through sugar maple charcoal like the flagship, then aged in new charred American oak and finished in Oloroso sherry casks⁶.

The timing is the story. American Single Malt became an official federal whiskey category in early 2025, the first new one in over half a century, and the biggest name in American whiskey waited barely eighteen months to claim shelf space in it. Craft distillers spent a decade building that category. Now they share it with Jack Daniel's at a price most of them can't touch; which house owns which label gets more tangled every year, and our distillery guides keep the map current. A charcoal-mellowed, sherry-finished malt is also a genuinely odd profile on paper; if your palate runs toward dark fruit and toasted grain rather than corn sweetness, this is the week's most interesting bottle you can actually expect to find.

Four Roses announced the second release in its Experimental Series on August 25: No. 002 Honey Cask Finish². The barrel logistics are a small circle. Four Roses sends used bourbon barrels to Bohman Bee Company, a local producer, to age its Bourbon Barrel Aged Honey. Once the honey is drained, the barrels come home for a second fill of bourbon, a blend of 6-, 7-, and 8-year whiskey bottled at 104 proof⁷.

The catch is availability. Like the Mizunara-finished No. 001 before it, this one sells only at the distillery and the Cox's Creek Visitor Center, starting September 18, in 375 ml bottles at $55. That works out to $110 per full bottle for anyone keeping score, and you have to drive to Kentucky to pay it. For the same money without the mileage, our complete bourbon buying guide covers what's on actual shelves. Honey finishes usually read as a gimmick; a second-fill honey barrel under a high-rye Four Roses recipe is at least an honest experiment rather than a flavored whiskey in disguise.

Beam's Ten Pin Bottle is the purest expression of where limited releases are heading. The bowling pin decanter, a tribute to the novelty bottles Jim Beam himself handed to friends starting in the 1950s, released August 22 at the James B. Beam Distilling Co. in Clermont during the celebration of Beam's birthday: 10-year, 100-proof Kentucky Straight Bourbon at $124.99, available nowhere else³. Collectors spent decades trading the empty originals. Jim Beam is betting they'll pay premium bourbon money for a full one.

The craft tier ran the same play with smaller numbers. Larrikin Bourbon Co. announced its Australia Series on August 27: six barrels of 11-year Old Elk bourbon split across Manuka honey, golden wattle, and sugar cane rum cask finishes, sold one expression per day at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival in Bardstown, September 11 through 13, with no retail or online release at all⁸. Starlight Distillery went further still. Its 10-Year Mizunara Reserve, a single cask-strength barrel finished in Japanese oak from trees 200 to 500 years old, totals 250 bottles: 200 by online lottery that opened August 28, and 50 in person at the Borden, Indiana distillery on September 12⁴. Buzzard's Roost was the outlier that actually shipped, returning its sold-out French Double Oak bourbon to online ordering August 27 with a seven-year base finished on Limousin oak⁹.

• September 2: Brown-Forman reports fiscal Q1. The first big-distiller earnings print since summer tariff escalations, and the clearest read on whether the downturn is bottoming. Watch the export line.
• September 2: Buffalo Trace On Tour registration opens. Free 75-minute guided tastings of Buffalo Trace, Eagle Rare 10, Weller Antique 107, and Sazerac Rye across Branson, Kansas City, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Denver this fall; four tickets per person, and they will go fast⁵. If those pours are unfamiliar, our Buffalo Trace guide explains where each sits in the lineup.
• September 12: Garrison Brothers releases 2026 Cowboy Bourbon at the Hye, Texas distillery, 141 proof and $249.99, with nationwide bottles following October 1¹⁰. Log sightings on Drops when they land.
• Maker's Mark Cellar Aged 2026 hits shelves today. The 112.1-proof, $175 blend we covered last week starts its allocated U.S. rollout September 1. The 2025 edition cleared fast in most markets.

Sources & methodology10 sources

Every claim in this issue links to its source. Reporting draws on distiller announcements, regulators and trade outlets, and prices are suggested retail at the time of publication.

Footnotes

1. BevNET, "Jack Daniel's Debuts American Single Malt Whiskey Nationwide in Limited Annual Release," August 25, 2026 ↩ ↩²

2. Fred Minnick, "Four Roses Releases Honey Cask Expression in Experimental Series," August 26, 2026 ↩ ↩²

3. Fred Minnick, "Jim Beam Announces Return of Ten-Pin Decanter," August 24, 2026 ↩ ↩²

4. Fred Minnick, "Starlight Distillery to Release 10-Year Mizunara Reserve Bourbon," August 31, 2026 ↩ ↩²

5. Fred Minnick, "Buffalo Trace Distillery On Tour to Return, Hitting Four Cities," August 31, 2026 ↩ ↩²

6. Robb Report, "Jack Daniel's American Single Malt is Now Available Nationally," August 2026 ↩

7. Breaking Bourbon, "Four Roses Distillery Continues Experimental Series with Honey Cask Finished Release," August 2026 ↩

8. Fred Minnick, "Larrikin Bourbon Co. to Release the Australia Series," August 27, 2026 ↩

9. Fred Minnick, "Buzzard's Roost Releases French Double Oak Bourbon," August 31, 2026 ↩

10. The Whiskey Wash, "Garrison Brothers Announces Launch of 2026 Cowboy Bourbon," August 2026 ↩