What makes American bourbon so expensive?
What exactly makes bourbon so expensive? Many opinions are circulating, ranging from the bourbon age to the distillery it came from to the number of bottles released. However, many whiskey connoisseurs argue that age does not determine the quality of bourbon, where a 10-year-old bourbon could taste better than a 12-year-old bourbon. Some argue that a distillery could release a great bourbon one day and then make a subpar bourbon the next. The number of bottles released to the public, often seen in allocations, also plays a massive role in the bourbon value based on supply and demand.
Bourbon is most often bought because of the taste; some whiskey connoisseurs say they’d buy a great whiskey even if it didn’t have a label. To which we agree. The American bourbon market has shown time and time again that consumers prefer taste over anything else when buying a whiskey off the shelf.
However, when great whiskey goes into packaging that is just ‘okay’; money is left on the table for whiskey brands. If the packaging is as good as the taste, bourbon can fetch much more in retail, secondary markets, and at auction. This is because of emotional design, which is a design that evokes emotions that result in positive user experiences. Take Paladar Tequila, for example, a new tequila brand made by the 5th generation of the last remaining independent and founding family of tequila. The fields used to grow the agave for their generations of tequila have been the same fields in the family for all five generations. The Paladar bottle design has the actual soil from the family agave fields adhered to the bottom of the bottle so consumers can touch where the tequila originated from. This is emotional design.
Being the visual and brand experts of whiskey, there are two things we see repeatedly that are the driving forces behind the perceived value of American bourbon outside of the taste:
The story behind the bourbon, the brand, or the distiller
The packaging it goes in
For this experiment, we chose ten American bourbons ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 in retail price, generally available to the public through retail channels. We excluded any bottles that were in special edition decanters to not have an extreme bias in the material price of crystal. The prices listed for each bottle were an average price found across online retail channels.
Old Rip Van Winkle 23-year $4,795.00
Michter’s 25-Year Kentucky Straight Bourbon $6,999.00
William Larue Weller (Buffalo Trace Antique Collection) $1,199.99
A.H. Hirsch Reserve 16-Year-Old $6,500.00
Brown Forman's King of Kentucky Single Barrel 2021 Release $5,099.00
Parker's Heritage Collection First Edition Cask Strength $8,999.00
Four Roses Al Young 50th Anniversary Limited Edition $2,174.99
Old Forester Birthday Bourbon (2002 Release) $5,499.99
Willett Family Estate 21-Year Bourbon $2,999.97
Booker’s 25th Anniversary Bourbon $2,099.99
We looked at these bottles in three ways to test their perception in relation to their price:
Market Matrix - Where each bottle fell on the matrix in terms of cost (tangible) and design styles of old world vs. new world (intangible)
VAS - Visual Attention Software is an AI model that takes an image and tells you where consumers are looking. For this experiment, we focused on the gaze sequence to see which bottles caught their attention first, second, and so on.
Design Observations - We used our 15 years of design expertise to make detailed observations around design elements like color, typography, materials, etc.
Market Matrix Results
We noticed a considerable market gap, which could be an opportunity for new brands for a $7,000-$10,000 Old World whiskey readily available in retail channels. Usually, dusty bourbons that have a significant age over 25 years fall within this price range and have an Old World look, but aren’t always easily accessible through retail channels for a seasoned whiskey consumer or new connoisseur.
VAS Results
The VAS Gaze sequence was interesting yet a little predictable, given that it primarily looks for contrast to know which bottle stands out the most. The big cluster of roses on the Four Roses bottle stood out the most, likely due to simplicity compared to the other, often text-heavy, and crowded labels. The shorter height of the Old Forester Birthday Bourbon bottle is a very obvious contrast to the other bottle shapes and heights. Old Rip Van Winkle likely caught a consumer’s eye because of the human portrait—which we naturally seek out others like us. What was a little shocking, albeit interesting, was that the wax top of the A.H. Hirsch bottle made it into the gaze sequence. This was likely due to the wax dip being short enough to create more contrast between the empty part of the bottle and the fill line with a darker whiskey color, making a dark/light/dark contrast pattern.
Design Observations
After a thorough analysis of every design element of each of the ten bottles, the results yielded a few surprises:
Bottle: Half of the bottles use what is traditionally a wine-shaped glass bottle.
Caps: 60% used wooden bartop caps (associated with quality), and 40% used plastic bartop caps (not always associated with quality). We’re surprised that so many used plastic bartop caps, which are significantly cheaper than wood bartop caps.
Tops: Foil wrap tops and wax dips were the most prominent as opposed to a neck label like a replica tax stamp on older bourbons.
Color: The most commonly used colors across all labels were white, gold, and brown. Considering this was a survey of bourbon, red (most commonly associated with bourbon) was only used twice.
Typography: Serif fonts were used 40% of the time, while script fonts were used 30%. While this doesn’t surprise us for whiskey as a category in whole, it was surprising to see on New World style labels, which tend to be a little more modern.
Label: 70% had varying sizes of a rectangular-shaped label, with 50% having unique edges requiring a custom diecut plate when printing.
Label Finishes: We were surprised that out of all of these bottles, only 30% use a hot foil stamp of some color (usually gold), usually seen as a visual cue for high quality. 30% of the labels use screenprinting (from what we could tell online) directly on their bottles, which can be costly and require high MOQs if done traditionally.
Label Art: Last but not least, 70% of the labels with some kind of art, regardless of size, used an illustrative style to bring the art to life. Old Rip Van Winkle was the only bottle to use a photo, which likely contributes to why it’s so recognizable in addition to its story.
Summary
So, what makes an American bourbon seem expensive? There is no one golden key trait that screams “EXPENSIVE”; instead, it is a fine-tuning of some smaller notes played all together at once. You might have a bottle that is just ‘okay’ where adding gold foil to the label, a wax dip on top, and refining the fonts used is what puts it into the Expensive League. It takes a design expert who is deeply immersed in the world of American bourbon to visually translate the story into an unforgettable bottle that commands a price with a comma.
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