How Well Do You Know Your Bourbon Bottles?

The irregular shape of the wax-dipped top is an extra clue beyond the overall bottle shape. That famous red wax was the inspiration of current managing director Rob Samuels’s grandmother, Margie Samuels, upon the brand’s introduction in 1958.

—Most bourbon fans can identify Blanton’s from the racehorse-figurine stoppers alone, which were introduced with the brand in 1984 and in 1999 incorporated letters spelling out B-L-A-N-T-O-N-S.

—Even with the angel-wings art that decorates the back not visible, Angel’s Envy has one of the more recognizable silhouettes, used for its trio of signature finished bourbons and select other expressions.

—Heaven Hill introduced this striking, twice-annual decanter release in 2018 as an homage to an Old Fitz holiday “diamond decanter” from the 1950s—when the brand was produced at Stitzel-Weller Distillery.

—Elegantly simple, this wide bottle with a flat front and back was also used for a Labrot & Graham export release when that historic Versailles, Kentucky, distillery was changing over to Woodford Reserve in 1996.

—Bottles can help tell a promotional story, in this case the history of a nineteenth-century Treasury agent known to let himself into locked rickhouses to fill his personal jugs with the best whiskey. Hence the bottle in the shape of a keyhole.

—Graceful lines extending from rounded shoulders to a tapered base are features of the only bottle shape used by the Frankfort, Kentucky, craft producer that restored the castle-like home of the historic Old Taylor Distillery.

—Tall and curved toward a slender middle, the Rabbit Hole design seems to suggest the squeeze of the passage through which Alice fell into her Wonderland adventures. Or, heck, turn it sideways and it’s the Mad Hatter’s bowtie!

—The oblong swell and sturdy base of the bottle that holds Michter’s coveted, limited-edition bourbons and ryes create a handsomely elegant form while also subtly evoking the brand’s frontier origins.

—Any Bowman expression you bring home will be in this squatly utilitarian bottle shaped vaguely like a horseshoe. If it’s a lucky horseshoe, you’ll find yourself drinking the Virginia distillery’s annual cask-strength release.

—No need to behold the roses molded into the glass to identify this bottle if you take note of its geometric angles that descend and transition from a narrow, square upper to a wide, circular base.

—You could compare Peerless’s squat cylinder to a keg or a fireplug. But that wouldn’t do justice to how stylish its symmetrically rounded ridges and thick pedestal look when displayed atop your home bar.