Many whiskey brands have long histories, something that’s often highlighted in their marketing. Think of all the times you’ve seen a label claiming that a whiskey is made from a traditional recipe. Or maybe you’ve visited a distillery and the tour guide has talked at length about how the original yeast strain is still used for fermentation. History grounds whiskey in a specific place and culture, giving it an identity that goes deeper than just, “This stuff tastes good.”

But whiskey, even from distilleries that are centuries old, evolves. Equipment gets updated, processes improve, grain varieties change, and brands come and go. In the U.S. in particular, Prohibition wiped out many whiskey brands and distilleries. Even well-known operations faded into obscurity, only to be rediscovered as the 21st-century bourbon and rye renaissance sparked widespread interest in dusties and their origins.

Thanks to that consumer curiosity, some companies are dredging up the past to re-create historic whiskeys for a modern audience. This can take a few forms—mimicking an old brand name and package design; distilling or bottling liquid that’s inspired by its predecessor, but not necessarily matching in flavor; and/or attempting to replicate the original whiskey through historic techniques or creative blending.

Modern-day producers draw on all kinds of resources to accomplish these goals, but the process is rarely straightforward or uniform. In most cases, it requires turning over a lot of rocks, fitting together disparate puzzle pieces, and a healthy dollop of imagination. Here’s how some companies are doing it.

Aesthetic Imitations

The simplest way to revive a historic brand usually involves reproducing a name or bottle without attempting to mimic the original whiskey inside. There are several examples in this category, including Bourbon de Luxe, Yellowstone, James E. Pepper, Old Tub, Mellwood, Nelson’s Green Brier, and J. Rieger. In many cases, the revival was the result of a personal connection—for example, the modern founder might be descended from the original brand owner.

Other times, a major distiller takes advantage of its own historic resources. Many of today’s biggest whiskey companies own the rights to long-dormant brands, thanks to the tangle of sales, acquisitions, and mergers that occurred in the 20th century. And some have archives of historic material so extensive that they employ a professional to help catalogue and manage it all—like Nick Laracuente, who has the enviable job of archivist at Buffalo Trace (his job title is “bourbon archaeologist”). When he came onboard a few years ago, then-CEO Mark Brown tasked him with digitizing the labels of Prohibition-era whiskies.

“He called it the ‘Prohibition Binder,’” Laracuente recalls. “There was all this art and stuff that was Prohibition labels, which he wanted on an iPad. As I was looking at them, I realized that in the margins you have Albert [Blanton]’s notations, like ‘Here’s Golden Wedding, let’s do this with this brand.’ There's a lot of paperwork back and forth to the Department of Revenue.” The extra details were a gold mine of information, not to mention a source of inspiration.

From this trove, Buffalo Trace developed the Prohibition Collection, a set of whiskies honoring those that were produced at the distillery during Prohibition. First released in 2023, the Collection has had two iterations thus far, each featuring five different brands. “We didn’t want to settle for just picking one of these labels so it became a series of five bottles to a set,” Laracuente says, explaining that for the debut collection they “picked the thickest stories and the coolest box art.”

Though the Prohibition Collection’s bottle shapes and labels aren’t exact replicas, many elements adhere closely to the originals. Each carton even includes a cut-out that could hold a prescription for medicinal whiskey, just as was required during Prohibition. The collection’s offerings change from year to year, and since Laracuente has only catalogued about three percent of Buffalo Trace’s archives so far, there should be plenty more to come.

Liquid Substitutes

When it comes to what’s in the bottle, some producers aim to capture the vibe of a historic whiskey, if not its exact flavor. Brown-Forman, which owns Jack Daniel’s and Old Forester, has been prolific in this area. Over the past few years, Jack has released age-statement whiskeys at 10, 12, and 14 years old—technically not new products, but revivals of whiskeys that were made at the Tennessee distillery over a century ago.

Master distiller Chris Fletcher has no way of knowing how closely these expressions hew to the original flavor of the whiskey, however, because there are almost no surviving bottles. “The few bottles that are sealed are valued in the tens of thousands of dollars, so nobody wants to open them,” he says.

Much of Old Forester’s core range is a nod to the brand’s storied history, including expressions like 1910 which is made using a double-barreling method that the distillery originally innovated over a century ago. But that’s a new expression, rather than a revival—something Old Forester did a few years ago when it brought back President’s Choice, a line of single barrels that debuted in the 1960s but disappeared over the following decade. Its 2018 relaunch coincided with the debut of Old Forester’s downtown Louisville distillery, and until June 2025 bottlings of President’s Choice could only be purchased there.

Old Forester took pains to make the packaging as close to the 1960s version as possible, but when it came to the whiskey, assistant master distiller Caleb Trigo says it was more about capturing the same vibe than an exact flavor. Master distiller emeritus Chris Morris, who had tasted examples of the original President’s Choice, helped with selections, as did then-master taster Jackie Zykan.

“[President’s Choice whiskey was older] than what we typically have in our Whiskey Row series and core lineup, which is four to six years,” Trigo explains, adding that the former typically falls into the nine- to seven-year range. “It was edging on that higher-age Old Forester stock, and that's what made it special. It's lower yielding, so the flavor profile evolves past that six-year mark.” Since Campbell’s departure from his role as president, Trigo, Morris, and master taster Melissa Rift continue to pick special barrels for the brand.

A Wink and a Nod

Some modern whiskey businesses have built their identity around historic brands, even to the point of trying to reproduce original flavors. In Scotland, the Lost Distillery Company blends whisky from contemporary sources in an effort to recreate liquid from long-closed single malt distilleries. Here in the U.S., the mission of Old Commonwealth, founded in 2019, “is to revive old brands so you can drink history,” according to spokesman Sean Evans. “We’re offering an interesting alternative to chasing down stuff at Sotheby’s.”

Old Commonwealth employs all the main methods of historic recreation. In some cases, like the Kentucky Nectar expression, the brand has no access to the original liquid, so founders Zachary Joseph, Andrew English, and Troy LeBlanc decided instead to create a honey-finished bourbon as an homage. For D.H. Cromwell, originally a single-barrel wheated bourbon named for a Prohibition-era bar owner known as “Dirty Helen,” they spoke to the retailer who had bottled the whiskey in 2000, Gordon Jackson, who admitted his memory of the exact flavor was hazy. That eased the way for bottling a rye bourbon instead of a wheater, with Old Commonwealth taking pains to closely mimic the original packaging. One striking difference—while the 2000-era bottle included the legend “V.G.S.” (for Very Good Shit), the 2025 one has “G.F.S.” (Gold Fucking Standard).

Old Commonwealth made considerable efforts to match one modern liquid to its predecessor, in the case of Colonel Randolph 16-Year-Old—a bourbon that drew on a historic brand name when Gordon Hue created it as a Japan-only release in the 1980s. That bottling is so rare that not even Hue has any left, but fortunately it came from the same stock as the legendary A.H. Hirsch 16-Year-Old—which isn’t cheap, but can still be found.

Old Commonwealth located a stash of modern 16-year-old bourbon with the same mashbill as the original, this time made in Kentucky rather than Pennsylvania. “Gordon helped us pick the first batch of barrels and put his stamp of approval on them,” Evans says. “He believes that the liquid we received for Colonel Randolph is better than the original A.H. Hirsch.” Notably, the modern version of Colonel Randolph is bottled at 106 proof, a few notches lower than the 116 proof of the original.

Resurrecting Lost Methods

Beyond efforts to bring back old whiskey brands, some distillers are reviving historic techniques and bottling the results under a new name. One example is Colorado’s Leopold Bros.—its Three Chamber Rye is a Monongahela-style whiskey made on a still that cofounder Todd Leopold commissioned using archival design plans. And Buffalo Trace recently announced Col. E.H. Taylor, Jr. Distiller’s Council, a bourbon that attempts to recreate the style made at the O.F.C. Distillery in the 19th century.

The whiskey’s inspiration came from a meeting held at Buffalo Trace in 1996, attended by distillery veterans (some in their 90s) who reminisced about making whiskey “the way we used to.” They talked about methods that were no longer in use but had been widely employed decades before. A young Harlen Wheatley was also there (the current master distiller at Buffalo Trace), soaking it all in and looking for ideas for future projects.

“We talked about all the whiskey that's been made here and what-all kind of things we can look at,” he recalls. “One of the things was this 'original recipe,' we call it, where we ferment the old-fashioned way, before they added setback. What I mean by that is it was naturally soured using long, open-tank fermentations, rather than the typical sour mash method.”

Wheatley tried this unusual fermentation technique using one of Buffalo Trace’s standard mashbills and he liked the results. After the ruins of the 19th-century O.F.C. Distillery—now known as Bourbon Pompeii—were uncovered in 2016, the distillery commissioned a copper fermentation tank and installed it in situ, buried in the earth, which allows Wheatley to carry out this step just as Taylor himself would have done.

“What we found through trial and error is these [tanks] are like heat sinks,” Wheatley explains. “They're in the ground so they're naturally cooled. It does a really nice job with a smooth fermentation, as if we planned it.” But Buffalo Trace deliberately did not name this bourbon “original recipe,” because there aren’t sufficient records of how other parts of the process were carried out to support that claim.

The Effort Is Worth It

However a producer goes about it, showcasing historic brands has become a sound business strategy for many. Bourbon drinkers that missed the dusty boom of the 2010s are still eager to connect with the whiskeys of yesteryear, even if they’re reproductions. And these drinkers are savvy—they expect brands to put in the work to ensure authenticity.

“Going the extra mile matters to some of the nerdiest of the bourbon nerds,” Evans says, pointing out features like the gold screw cap on Colonel Randolph that mirrors the original to a T. “And despite some of the challenges to achieve those little details, of which there are many, it seems to be worth it. The feedback that we get it is—keep it up, this is really cool.”