There’s something deeply American—front-porch-on-a-humid-evening American—about the return of Knob Creek Bourbon x Rye, a bottle that quite literally splits the difference between tradition and experimentation. After a successful debut last year, James B. Beam Distilling Co. is bringing back the Kentucky Blended Straight Whiskey for 2025, reasserting its place on the shelf for those who like their whiskey high-proof, high-character, and unafraid of crossing streams.
The blend is precisely what it says on the label: Knob Creek 9 Year Old Bourbon meets Knob Creek 7 Year Old Rye—two pedigreed spirits in their own right, now unified in a 113-proof offering that tastes like a handshake between two sides of Kentucky. It’s a hybrid, yes, but not in the tech-startup sense. This is a blending of legacy. A bourbon and a rye that don’t compete for dominance so much as collaborate in turning the dial up on complexity.
The nose gives off maple syrup and vanilla, those bourbon-cornerstone aromatics, but there’s more beneath: toasted nuts, baking spice, cinnamon, and nutmeg, the sort of scents that drift through an October kitchen. On the palate, the sweetness is unmistakable—caramel, toffee, the so-called “brown sweets”—but so is a faint fruitiness, like stewed stone fruit or a dried cherry buried in trail mix. And just when you think it’s all sweetness and harmony, the black pepper rolls in on the finish, not overwhelming, but enough to leave a peppery punctuation mark on an otherwise rich and rounded pour.
It’s not subtle. It’s not supposed to be.
At 113 proof, this is whiskey for the enthusiast who doesn’t mind a little fire in the glass. But it’s also balanced—the rye brings spice, the bourbon brings body, and together they create something that manages to be both familiar and entirely new.
Knob Creek Bourbon x Rye is available nationwide now at a suggested retail price of $44.99 per 750ml bottle, an accessible entry into what is, essentially, a curated duality of Kentucky’s two most beloved mashbills.
The release follows closely on the heels of Booker’s Bourbon’s By The Pond Batch, signaling an ambitious season for Beam. But while Booker’s leans into small-batch rarity, Bourbon x Rye feels like a middle-finger to category boundaries—a bottle made not just to sip, but to think about.
For more information, head over to the brand’s official website.
