Editor’s Note: This article is republished from Chuck’s blog with his permission.

You know how brands have been losing their age statements these last few years? Well, one major brand is bringing theirs back. The standard expression of Knob Creek Bourbon will once more have a 9-year age statement on the label.

About four years ago, Beam Suntory realized that with Knob’s sales growth, they didn’t have enough inventory in the pipeline to keep it going as a 9-year, so the age statement was gradually eliminated. Many other brands around the industry have had the same problem and done the same thing. Fred Noe and son Freddie have been agitating to bring it back. Sometime early next year, a new updated label will appear, with the age statement. (Same bottle and wax seal.)

“People maybe don’t care about the age of Jim Beam white label,” says Fred Noe. “But the person who orders a Knob Creek manhattan, he wants to know it’s 9 years old.”

It looks like the inventory will also allow some limited releases of older age-stated Knob.

In other news, Baker’s Bourbon is getting a new look and becoming a single-barrel product. That change will happen sooner, probably this fall. Baker Beam has been working with Fred and Freddie on the changes. It will still be 7-years-old (age stated) and 107° proof.

Both changes were announced this week at a Beam sales meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Baker’s and Knob Creek were launched in the early 1990s, along with Booker’s and Basil Hayden, as the Jim Beam Small Batch Bourbons Collection.