Black Maple Hill Single Barrel #149 14 Year Old Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey (750ml)

Note: Product has come from a private collection and as such has some minor scuffing/scratches/handling marks. There's also some cellar bloom on the front and back labels, however overall the condition is good. Actual product pictured.

Black Maple Hill is not a distillery, but rather an ‘independent label’ first introduced in 2000 by a Californian wine and spirits distributor called CVI Brands. Importantly, this is said to be one of the original early era bottlings, as opposed to the newly re-marketed Black Maple Hill bottlings now supplied by a small craft-distillery in Oregon called 'Stein' and packaged in different shaped bottles. We can confirm this bottle's position in the brand's timeline by the "CVI Brands" agency statement which appears on the back label.

The legend and hype behind Black Maple Hill stems from a belief that early releases were wheated bourbon from Stizel-Weller and bottled by Julian Van Winkle III himself. Later, bottlings were said to have been moved to Kentucky Bourbon Distillers (KBD aka Willett) and made using whiskeys sourced from Heaven Hill. Whatever the truth may be, "...the magical touch of the Van Winkle finger conferred an irresistible desirability, and Black Maple Hill bottlings began to sell for thousands of dollars on the secondary market."

It's not known precisely which whiskey(s) made it into this bottle. The contents are open to speculation, especially the later iterations which are equivalent to an independent whiskey purchased from another independent whiskey supplier. What is certain is that this is one uber rare and collectable Bourbon.

Whiskyauctioneer.com offer some further insight as to the history of these bottlings:
"The Kulsveen’s [KBD] oversaw a golden period for the brand, with well-aged bourbons filled into a number of now hugely collectable Black Maple Hill releases. Although KBD had acquired some Stitzel-Weller stock, the majority of their casks came from the neighbouring Heaven Hill distillery in Bardstown, a distillery sadly lost in a fire in 1996 and increasingly desirable ever since... By the late 2000s, a global Bourbon boom had catapulted Black Maple Hill into the spotlight. The irresistible prospect of old-aged liquid capsules of Stitzel-Weller and Heaven Hill swept the Bourbon community, and Black Maple Hill bottlings quickly became an absolute must-have. They developed a cult-following of fans fuelled by curiosity and connoisseurship. Black Maple Hill bottlings were increasingly becoming harder to find and soon were appearing on the secondary market for values far in excess of their original retail price tag. Sadly they were not the only benefactors, and KBD’s own Willett Family Estate brand had surfed the same wave, and the company increasingly reserved its stock for this, limiting what they could make available to CVI Brands and their other contracts. Black Maple Hill was eventually reduced to a non-age statement product, before disappearing from shelves. As they struggled to find an alternative it appeared as though Black Maple Hill was at the end of their story."