06/29/2026
IW Harper Cabernet Cask
For all the history nerds who might be following along, this is a fun one! IW Harper was a brand started by Isaac Wolfe (IW) Bernheim and his company Bernheim Brothers and Co., which started bottling and selling sourced bourbon in 1872, a practice that is well tread territory in modern times. IW Harper bourbon being the main product (Harper seemingly being an invented name for marketing), the Bernheim brothers won accolades for their products and produced all the way through prohibition, being one of the few companies allowed to sell medicinal whiskey. Fun fact, it was these same brothers for which Bernheim Wheat Whiskey and Heaven Hill’s Bernheim distillery is named. In 1937, less than a decade after the end of “the noble experiment”, Bernheim sold the company to Schenley Distilling Corporation, one of the four biggest companies in liquor at the time. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions the brand floated around eventually being owned by United Distillers, who then became Diageo. The IW Harper line had been growing in popularity in overseas markets, specifically Japan, and with American interest in aged spirits waning from the 1970’s onward, the brand went export only, completely disappearing from liquor shelves in the US. It enjoyed a good run on the other side of the Pacific before finally being put to bed.
In 2015, with a renewed interest in bourbon, Diageo revived the brand, this time with juice coming from their own Stitzel-Weller distillery, a historic distillery in its own right. This current iteration of IW Harper enjoys updated branding including the “Bowing Man” that once graced all of their advertisements. This Cabernet cask-finished bourbon will appeal to folks who enjoy Angel’s Envy and other whiskeys that see time in a red wine barrel, and is certainly a steal at $5 per ounce!
