Month: March 2021

2nd Round Wrap Up

The 2nd round is over, which means another 16 bourbons have ended their world cup journey and must wait another year to try again. However, it also means we have 16 lucky bourbons left in the world cup who get to do it all again in the next round. .

As always, we would like to thank all of you who took part and supported the competition. We’ve had over 5,000 votes and the cup is hotting up.

Highlights of this round

Let’s start with Four Roses. 3-time winners of the world cup and last year’s beaten finalists - in fact, last year’s final was their only loss since the competition started way back in 2017. The shock at the time was huge, but everyone expected them to come back bigger and better this year. Judging from their easy first round win it looked like the prediction was solid. But (you knew there was going to be a ‘but’) they hadn’t counted on having such a tough match as early as this. They were up against Blanton’s Gold, who had no intention of letting Four Roses have it all their way. The match was hotly contested to begin with, but slowly Blanton’s started to pull away until there was a gap of over 20% between them. Four Roses rallied and gained some ground back, but ultimately it was all too little too late and they ran out of time to finish their come back. It ended 56% to 44% in favour of Blanton’s Gold. Which means, for the first time in our world cup history, the final will not contain Four Roses Single Barrel! Wow.

Another shock result, although not quite as earth shattering, was Eagle Rare 10 beating Michters 20. We certainly didn’t see that coming and nor did the fans. One of whom took to Twitter to comment on the result and declare the voters ‘fools’. Do you agree?

Mav’s favourite bourbon Noah’s Mill is having its best world cup for years. Confidently sweeping aside Blade & Bow to make it to the 3rd round. A good result for what many had considered the underdog in that tie.

Finally, the dark horse many are secretly tipping for this year’s cup - Weller 12, beat Elmer T Lee by a narrow margin (52% to 48%) to advance to the next round.

As always, the full results of the draw can be found by clicking on our lovely World Cup wall chart below. There may be zooming in required or just follow the craze and print it out in full and hang it on your wall.

3rd round key ties

So what lies ahead in the 3rd round?

The pick of the left-hand side of the draw is a hard one this year as there are so many top shelf bourbons drawn in that half that still remain. Seriously, just look at these names - George T Stagg, Weller 12, Pappy 20, Old Rip, Elijah Craig 18 and Blanton’s Straight from the barrel! This is by far the most difficult half to be in. We have to choose one to watch though, so we are going to call out Stagg vs Weller 12 as our pick of the bunch.

On the other side of the draw things are a little more balanced. Our pick though is going to be Noah’s Mill vs Blanton’s Single Barrel. Can the plucky underdog cause an upset? Or will Blanton’s continue to dominate this years world cup matches?

Don't miss out on your opportunity to influence the results, just head over to our twitter account and vote.