Old Fitzgerald 7 Year Bottled in Bond Bourbon (Spring 2018)

🥃🚂 “ALL ABOARD THE FITZGERALD EXPRESS!” 🛳️🍾 Finally…it…has…arrived! After months of waiting, days of pacing, and more than a few nights whispering sweet nothings to the liquor store clerk—behold!—Heaven Hill’s Old Fitzgerald Bottled-in-Bond 7-Year Aged Bourbon has landed in our trembling, slightly sweaty hands! Released in June 2025, this beauty rolls onto the scene exactly 155 years after the “Old Fitzgerald” name was first poured into glasses aboard luxury steamships and elite railcars, reserved for only the snootiest of mustachioed barons and bourbon-soaked industrialists. Back then, if you didn’t have a monocle or your own railroad, you weren’t getting a sip. Sorry, peasants. It wasn’t until around 1900 that this hush-hush hooch began making its rounds to the masses, galloping across America and Europe like a wheated wild stallion. Even during Prohibition, sales (and probably a few flasks) kept slipping through the cracks. Then came a pivotal moment in bourbon lore: a certain Julian “Pappy” Van Winkle, in what may be the greatest $10 purchase in history, scooped up the Old Fitz brand and tossed in his legendary “whisper of wheat” mash bill for good measure. A legend was reborn. Fast-forward to July 2025: I got my hands on a bottle during the first week of release—and the secret is officially out. Clocking in at a shockingly sensible $60, this may be the best consolation prize for those of us who missed the velvet-robed 9-Year Old Fitz decanters, which now sell for $130 MSRP (if you’re lucky) and go for obscene amounts on the secondary. (Looking at you, guy on Facebook trying to trade one for a jet ski.) But let’s not forget—Heaven Hill, those bourbon wizards from Bardstown, are the current stewards of this storied juice, having acquired the brand from Diageo in 1992. And let’s be honest: this isn’t just a bottle of bourbon—it’s marketing sorcery, history in a glass, and a wheated symphony for the senses. 🥃 So join me, friends, for this history-soaked, caramel-kissed, oak-whispering review of a bourbon that’s as rich in flavor as it is in folklore. We’ve got the usual shenanigans, some historical rabbit holes, a few dad jokes, and—if you’re lucky—Nicole might even make a cameo to roll her eyes at me again. 👍 LIKE it. 💬 COMMENT it. 🔁 SHARE it. 📬 SUBSCRIBE for more bourbon banter. And remember—every time you click that subscribe button, an angel gets its whiskey. 🥲 TTFN, bourbon buddies! 👋 Cheers, Professor Belmont Björn 🍻🎩 Full Video Review: https://youtu.be/c6ASh3sjHME Full YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@belmontbjornsbourbonbanter?si=rNnsUP4-jm1XiTbm - BBBB - ⸻

Color: Medium/Light Copper Nose: Relatively light nose (even the Mrs. says it's nowhere near as strong as most that I have asked her to nose); Some barrel char; something akin to a stewed apple; I'm getting "stone fruits" like canned peaches or pears. I'm not sure how you guys do it, but I don't just nose the glass — I nose the bottle upon opening. When I do that with this one, I get the familiar molasses/burnt sugars. Ok, let's go in for a first sip... Palate: (Pour #1 neat) "Cherry" is the first impression I get — along with a nice warm chest hug! Old wood soaked in cherries. Second sip reveals more cherries, but this time with a spicy kick... like a baking spice of some sort. Chest hugs persist as a sip. (Pour #2 with a large ice ball) The introduction of the ice brings out the spiciness first, whereas the neat pour revealed the sweet/cherry profile first. Since this is a Wheater, I would not have expected "spice" to play such a leading role in its profile. Not a lot more to add here with ice. Oh, wait... was that licorice? (Rubs chin). Finish: I'm giving this a long finish — primarily a long spice-driven finish that lingers in the back and sides of the tongue. Final Thoughts: This is my first Old Fitzgerald expression ever. It's been one of the more elusive bourbon brands that I have encountered. Oh, I've been able to locate many past releases. But they've all been behind glass with price tags of anywhere from $399.99 to $799.99. So this new offering is preceded by some high expectations — which may not be entirely fair. That said, this is GOOD. It checks-off most things on my bourbon checklist. If I found it again for SRP (which, by all indications, should prove not too far a stretch), I would definitely grab another bottle. All things considered, I'm giving this 3.75 stars. It could get a boost following subsequent tastings. We'll see...

Picked this up today in the allocated free-for-all Utah calls an equitable distribution system 🙄, but it was today 😃. Distilled Spring 2018, aged 7 years, 100 proof. Tasting neat. Mahogany copper and good coating legs in the glass. Nose is fabulous: sweet stone fruit, vanilla oak, a little spicy and tannic at the back end. On the palate, it's sweet, peaches, honey, and soft caramel, with more pronounced graham cracker and then spicy grain flavors building. The mouthfeel is rich, oily, and sweet, and the flavors really "sing" in harmony. The finish shows up with a turn to tannic oak and leather, dried fruit, and spicy grass--still sweet, but more earthy and dark. Hint of citrus as it lingers...for a long finish. An ice cube tamps down the sweetness and accentuates the oak-leather tannins, bringing out an odd acrid flavor that's quite distracting. That's an unusual outcome for ice in my experience. Therefore, this is better sipped neat. I'm quite taken by this bottle, the first Old Fitz I've ever had. Of course, I'm going to drink, think, and add more to this review as I work this bottle. But first blush? Excellent. The finish stands apart from what is a more consistent nose and palate flavor profile, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Leaves you something to think about. I did knock it down from 4.5 to 4.25 in my rating given my experience with ice, which doesn't improve this whiskey. That's unfortunate, an oddity I can't explain but can taste.

Nose is full of rich, sweet, enticing notes; caramel flan, French toast, cinnamon roll, candied orange, damp earth, and toasted oak. Ethanol sneaks in every now and again, but it doesn’t detract. Palate offers pancakes with maple syrup, creamed corn, the flan from the nose, Whoppers candy (malted milk ball) and an earthy note underneath which at gunpoint I would say is beet. It’s not the most complex whiskey, but what’s here is rich for the proof and VERY rounded and well integrated. Finish brings some notes which bring balance to the sweetness in the form of mature oak, light cinnamon, and white pepper, along with butterscotch, and raisin. It is a little on the short side. With such a nice finish you want it to last a little longer. Mouthfeel is light bodied with a delightful creaminess, and fits the flavor profile to a tee. My first experience of this expression and overall it’s exceptional; a sweet round bourbon with balancing oak and spice is pretty much my jam. And this is only the non-limited seven year! Not hard to envision why older expressions would fetch the prices they do on the secondary market. At 59.99, this would be a staple in my cabinet and could be a top daily drinker candidate assuming availability (I had a hard time scoring this and basically got lucky) Rebuy on sight.

Nose - Caramel, vanilla, bright red maraschino cherries, light leather Taste - Caramel, vanilla, cinnamon red hots, light red cherry cough syrup sweetness, cocoa powder bitter, buttery caramel Finish - Lingering cinnamon, caramel, vanilla, light chocolate Score - 82/100 Final Thoughts - This is a fairly tasty, but standard/run of the mill wheated bourbon. Feels fairly generic on the nose with a nice hint of red/cherry, but that changes on the palate with a more cinnamon red hot up front that fades into a lightly buttery but somehow dry caramel? It's tasty but I think it feels a bit lacking in terms of what a wheated bourbon can really bring to the table. Would I drink it if offered? - Yes Would I specifically order it? - Maybe Would I buy a bottle? - No NOTE - All reviews are done without factoring in price.

The nose is packed. It's very much on the sweet end. Maple syrup. Chocolate frosting. Some kind of berry. Vanilla. The palette surprised me, as there's more spice than I expected. Slight oak. Cinnamon. Cherry. I probably had a bit of a hicher standard in mind going in, so maybe that brought it down some. But honestly, it's a good bottle that I may need to sit with some and see how it develops. It's one Im glad I purchased, but I wouldn't pay over msrp for. But at msrp price, it's a good purchase.