Jefferson's Ocean Aged At Sea Batch No.1 82.3 proof NV (1 BT75)

Jefferson's Ocean Aged At Sea Batch No.1 82.3 proof NV

First voyage, plastic sticker label, ullage: top shoulder, side labels worn and peeling

1 bt 75cl (nop)

Jefferson’s Ocean has one of the most famous origin stories in all of bourbon. In 2008 Trey Zoeller, Jefferson’s founder, was spending his 40^th birthday with his old friend Chris Fischer, a marine biologist and fellow native Kentuckian, aboard Fischer’s research ship the MV Ocearch. They were, of course, drinking bourbon, and as the gentle rocking of the waves moved the whiskey back and forth in their glasses, Zoeller hit on an idea: What if they put barrels on a ship to age, instead of in a warehouse?

It's not an entirely crazy notion. Many historians believe that the earliest bourbon was only incidentally aged, taking on the character of the barrel as it was transported down the Mississippi and then around Florida and up the East Coast to New York City.

Fischer studies sharks, a research project that takes him and the Ocearch around the world – a perfect setting for Zoeller’s experiment. Over three years, the ship, and its cargo of five barrels of whiskey, went back and forth across the Equator and passed through the Panama Canal six times. Along the way, two of the barrels corroded and broke apart, their contents spilling over the Ocearch’s deck.

The resulting whiskey was like nothing Zoeller had seen before. In that short period of time, the barrels had lost almost half their contents to evaporation, while the whiskey itself turned rich and syrupy, with a subtle but distinctly briny note from the exposure to sea air. When production fell behind schedule, Zoeller had the label printed as a sticker, instead of directly onto the bottle – one way to tell the true “first voyage” bottlings (LOTS 466 and 467) apart from the rest.

The first batch, released in 2012, produced just 250 bottles. It became an immediate sensation, so much so that Zoeller made Jefferson’s Ocean a regular part of his portfolio. Today the whiskey is aged for eight years in Kentucky and then aged for just five to ten months aboard the ship, making the two bottles in this collection from that first batch not just rare but an entirely different whiskey from what followed.

Please note that all spirits are sold for collection in New York or shipment to the District of Columbia, New Hampshire and New York via specialized carriers. For delivery outside of the United States, please see Important Information for Purchases at Wine and Spirit Sales in the Conditions of Business.