A $200 budget gives you the opportunity to explore some of the best bourbons money can buy.

While there are no hard-to-get Pappy or Rip Van Winkle bottles, or ultra-premium, ultra-rare liquids from renowned distilleries of yesteryear, there are a wonderful group of delicious bourbon expressions from leading American distilleries that will tickle your tastebuds.

Finding the best bourbon is entirely subjective and based on a wide variety of factors including flavor, taste, aroma, price, and accessibility. An extended budget allows you to delve into the areas usually kept for experts, where the subtleties of wood barrel aging, lengthy maturation, and hand-selected casks all play a part.

As a longtime lover of good bourbon whiskey, this collection represents some of the finest bottles I have seen and/or had the pleasure to try. When you get the opportunity to taste, sample, or purchase these bottles, make sure you do so because they don’t disappoint.

Best Buy

1. Blanton’s Single Barrel Bourbon

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Blanton’s Bourbon gets its name from Colonel Albert Blanton, who spent over 55 years producing, studying, and upholding whiskey traditions at what is now the Buffalo Trace Distillery.

A hard to get but distinctive bottle of fine older bourbon (a bottle of Blanton’s looks like a glass hand grenade but with a galloping horse on top instead of a pin), Blanton’s Single Barrel was the first wide-release single barrel bourbon when first bottled by Master Distiller Elmer T. Lee in 1984.

This single barrel bourbon fills your mouth with the most amazing flavors of sweet, toasty caramel, and hints of pepper and cloves. Blanton’s is sweet to the taste with a hint of citrus, while the vanilla aromas add to the complexity.

Blanton’s Bourbon is worth the price tag for committed whiskey drinkers with a taste for notable single barrel whiskey. Sipped neat or over ice, it will quickly take pride of place on the top shelf of your home bar.