Blood Oath MMXV Very Limited Release Straight Bourbon Whiskey Pact #1 2015 3 Bottles in Wood Box

John Rempe, the master distiller at Luxco, created the Blood Oath series in 2015 as an opportunity for him to play around with blending outside the company’s normal volume-driven whiskey brands – and, in that same vein, to raise the company’s profile. It worked: Blood Oath, and in particular the first three releases, have become hot picks among American whiskey collectors. Only 15,000 of Pact No. 1 were produced.

At the time, Luxco was strictly a non-distilling producer, and Rempe was its director of corporate research and development. Soon after, it opened its own distillery, on a sweeping hillside near Bardstown, and in 2021 was purchased by MGP.

Pact No. 1 is a combination of three bourbons: a six-year-old wheated, a seven-year-old high-rye and a 12-year-old with a traditional mash bill. It went into the bottle at 98.6 proof, a nice nod back to the “blood” in Blood Oath. A small number of bottles, including these, were sold in a three-bottle set, with a large wood box to match.

Release: Blood Oath Bourbon, Pact No. 1

Producer: Luxco

Misc.: Every subsequent release of Blood Oath has been a blend, though Rempe and Luxco are silent on where they sourced the whiskey.

Collectors’ tips: Like many recent luxury releases, Blood Oath comes in bespoke packaging, in this case a sturdy wood box.