Exclusive: Heaven Hill Announces 19-Year-Old Wheat Whiskey for 2025 Heritage Collection

Heaven Hill just announced the latest release in its annual Heritage Collection: a 19-year-old Kentucky Straight Wheat Whiskey. Bottled in December 2024 at 100 proof, it’s the oldest-ever wheat whiskey released by the brand, and among the oldest straight wheat whiskeys ever released into the American market.

Heaven Hill’s “ultra-premium” Heritage Collection is released each Spring and features one of the distillery’s six traditional mash bills, generally aged for at least 15 years: bourbon, wheated bourbon, rye, corn whiskey, malt whiskey, and wheat whiskey.

Previous national releases of the Heritage Collection have included 17- and 18-year-old bourbons (2022 and 2024) as well as a 20-year-old corn whiskey (2023). This year marks the first wheat whiskey in the lineup.

According to Heaven Hill, this year’s release comes from 277 barrels filled between August and September of 2005. The liquid was distilled from Heaven Hill’s standard wheat whiskey mash, which the distillery discloses is 51 percent wheat, 37 percent corn, and 12 percent malted barley. It’s the same mash bill used in the distillery’s Bernheim line of wheat whiskey, which includes both 90-proof and barrel-proof expressions.

All barrels for the 2025 Heritage Collection release were aged on the 5th and 6th floors of Rickhouse Y, situated at Heaven Hill’s main barrel campus in Bardstown, Ky. Heaven Hill says it has over 2 million barrels aging across its Kentucky warehouses.

“While wheat can contribute a smoother, milder flavor compared to other grains, not all wheat whiskeys are sweet,” says master distiller Conor O’Driscoll, speaking exclusively to VinePair. “The sweetness people expect can depend on other factors like the aging process, the distillation method, percentage of wheat used, or any other grains used in the mash.”

Around two years before bottling, O’Driscoll and Heaven Hill’s Whiskey Innovation Team first identified the barrels in this release as potential inclusions for the Heritage Collection.

“We knew we had something special when we tasted it at 17 years old, and continued to monitor it until we felt it had reached its full potential,” he says.

The team tested the batch at various proof points before narrowing it down to either 107 or 100 proof. Ultimately, the team decided on the latter to hit a “sweet spot of not tasting over-aged, while still balancing both sweetness and peppery notes.”

While the Heaven Hill Heritage Collection focuses on the company’s six “traditional” mash bills, the annual Parker’s Heritage bottling — released each Fall — allows more room for innovation. In past years, there have been two wheat whiskeys bottled as part of the Parker’s Heritage lineup: an 11-year “Heavy Char” wheat whiskey (2021) and a 13-year cask-strength wheat whiskey (2013).

“The Heritage Collection is more classic, more traditional,” O’Driscoll told us in the lead up to last year’s release. “We’re not doing weird mash bills or new barrel finishes. Whereas Parker’s is a lot more innovative. So you will see different barrel finishes, different chars, different mashbills.”

The latest Heritage Collection release will begin shipping across the United States and in limited international distribution in early March 2025. Bottled at 100 proof, the highly limited bottling carries an MSRP of $299.99. Like all Heritage Collection releases, it comes in a bespoke blue box with a double door design. Information including age, mash bill, and rickhouse location is listed on the bottle’s front label.

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