Bottled in Bond: What the Label Legally Guarantees

Bite-Sized National Bourbon Heritage Month — Special Topic

Three words on a whiskey label carry a real federal floor, and the strength runs in one order. Bottled in bond is the top: one distiller, one distillery, one six-month distilling season, at least four years in wooden containers, exactly 100 proof, among the six conditions under 27 CFR 5.88. Straight sits below it: for bourbon, mainly two years minimum in new charred oak, since additives are already excluded at the base bourbon level. Bourbon on its own sits below that: made in the U.S. from at least 51 percent corn, aged in new charred oak, but with no minimum age at all. A bourbon can legally be three months old.

Small batch, handmade, handcrafted, craft, and reserve carry no defined production standard under federal labeling rules. Federal rules set no barrel-count ceiling for what a distillery may describe as small batch. Maker's Mark got tested on "handmade" in two separate lawsuits, in California and Florida, and won both. Both suits were dismissed, not because "handmade" lacked a federal definition, but because the courts found the alleged interpretation unreasonable: no buyer picking up a nationally sold bottle would read "handmade" and assume no machines were involved. A related case even rejected the argument that TTB's label approval shields a claim like that from a lawsuit at all. TTB approval doesn't establish that the agency independently verified every marketing claim on the label.