Booker’s Bourbon announced the release of the brand’s first expression of 2025, and it pays a touching tribute to a dear friend of Fred Noe, Beam Chairman and CEO Barry Berish. Berish passed away in 2024, and this batch was made to celebrate his legacy.
The bourbon is sourced from barrels that range from four different production dates and spent time aging in five warehouses. The batch has an age statement of 7 years, 2 months and 4 days. Its suggested retail price is $99.99 and it clocks in at 125.7 proof.
Booker’s shares that Barry was quite the partier, and when the Noe family celebrated the bicentennial of their whiskey-making legacy, Barry decided to throw the party to end all parties.
“All day, Barry brought Beam pride to everyone in the crowd,” Fred Noe shared in a news release. “He stood front and center on stage from morning to night, his energy never flagging, highlighting what we’d accomplished and drumming up excitement for all we were about to achieve.”
The Breakdown For Barry’s Batch
- 41% from 5th floor of 7-story Warehouse 3
- 14% from 5th floor of 7-story Warehouse 1
- 4% from 7th floor of 9-story Warehouse H
- 32% from 5th floor of 7-story Warehouse X
- 9% from 4th floor of 7-story Warehouse G
As far as tasting notes are concerned, Noe shares that Barry’s Batch has a “warm and welcoming” nose, presumably like the man it honors, and has plenty of vanilla-laden sweetness from the extensive time it spent aging in new white oak. The finish has plenty of balance, and Fred Noe shared that this whiskey was a joy to create in a news release.
“We’re more than grateful for everything he did and everything he was: a real good guy, and truly one of a kind,” Noe wrote. “So, here’s to you Barry, you’ll always be in our hearts.”
This would not be the first time that Booker’s has paid a liquid homage to an important person central to the Noe family’s legacy. Perhaps one of the more touching whiskeys ever released was the 2023 drop of Booker’s Mighty Fine Batch bourbon.
The whiskey was made to celebrate Booker’s favorite phrase whenever he approved of a delicious batch of whiskey and referred to it as “mighty fine.”
“If you knew Booker, then you knew ‘mighty fine’ was his go-to phrase,” Noe shared about his father. “He would often get together with other folks in the bourbon industry to taste samples of Booker’s Bourbon, and everyone knew he was happy with his selection when he sipped it and said it was ‘mighty fine,’ followed by, ‘that’s a damn good batch!'”
More About Booker’s and the Noe Legacy
Booker’s launched in 1987, when Booker Noe, the grandson of Jim Beam, wanted to share his signature bourbon with the world. The Master Distiller initially introduced this bourbon as a special gift for Booker’s friends during the holidays. Yet Booker’s private stock of bourbons was so well-loved, that he ended up making these bourbons publicly available.
These story-driven whiskeys are not released on a schedule — they are released when they are ready. The Beam-owned bourbon brand shares that with each release, the Noe family offers up anecdotal stories about moments, people and phrases that are central to their whiskey-making history, giving drinkers and fans a snapshot of the lives of one of the most important families in the bourbon world.
Booker’s typically releases four unfiltered and uncut bourbons a year.
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