This Brand Makes The Worst Bourbon, According To 24% Of People

Because there is a lot of bourbon in the United States, making the decision between which bourbon to chose can be rather confusing. To gauge which brand name bourbon should be avoided at all costs, Mashed conducted a survey and in it we asked 596 people which brand of bourbon was the worst.

The most popular of the bourbon brands competing for the worst position was Basil Hayden's. Only 7.38% of respondents deemed it to be the worst. The two other broadly popular bourbon brands were Knob Creek and Maker's Mark, which got 9.40% and 9.90% of the vote, respectively.

Jumping into the proper double digits, Bulleit received 11.24% of the disapproval. A large gap then occurs before more people agree that Four Roses isn't very good, specifically 17.28%. At 20.64%, Wild Turkey almost won the dubious honor of being the worst version of the spirit. However, there was one that's apparently even less palatable.

Jim Beam has been crowned the worst brand of bourbon by Mashed readers. It wasn't even that close. 24.16% disliked it in particular. The difference between that and Wild Turkey is almost one in four versus one in five. 

What is strange, however, is that in 2020, during the pandemic-inspired surge in alcohol purchases, the drinks market analysis group IWSR discovered that Jim Beam is the best selling bourbon brand with 10 million 9-liter cases sold globally each year. Around the same time, Drizzly, the online liquor store, reported that Jim Beam only came in fifth when measured by number of sales. 

That divide may point to a problem Bill Petrie noticed with the brand in 2021. Writing a blog post for Brandivate Marketing, he notes that Jim Beam attempted mass popularity only to become an utterly unremarkable product that consistently lost out to other brands with their own developed niche. That said, Jim Beam, despite being unliked by many, has still managed to be the generic bourbon that people and bars stock as the baseline bourbon.