Even as it backed off of a heavy commitment to expanding its Scotch footprint, British drinks colossus Diageo began a major expansion into bourbon. Part of this was investing in giving Bulleit a distillery and other infrastructure to call its own, and the other part was in taking the aged stock it had piled up in the Stitzel-Weller warehouses in Shively (a neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky) and bottling it in various limited edition releases. One of those was Blade And Bow 22 Year Old.

Let’s say the average consumer, shopping for an old bourbon, is on the internet doing due diligence before buying a $150 bottle. Something critical for that person to understand is that, following the lead of a few key individuals, most bourbon bloggers have a strong bias against Diageo, and Blade And Bow 22 Year Old suffered for it.

Blade And Bow is made from two stocks of very aged whiskey, coming from the Heaven Hill-owned Bernheim Distillery and the Sazerac-owned Buffalo Trace Distillery. However, Diageo can’t just up and say it’s from Bernheim and Sazerac, presumably because of the confidentiality agreements that are standard in the bourbon industry. They give the street addresses instead, because the law requires them to say where the whiskey was made, even when they can’t say who made it.

When a trendy, popular independent bottler describes its products in a similar way (say, High West or Barrell Bourbon), the bourbon blogging clique praises them to the heavens for their transparency, and rightfully so. When Diageo does it, they mock and deride them for it.