Old Forester

Old Forester Bourbon

Liter glass bottle of Old Forester
Type	Bourbon whiskey
Manufacturer	Brown-Forman
Country of origin	Kentucky, United States
Alcohol by volume	43.00%
Proof (US)	86
Related products	Jack Daniel's

Old Forester is a brand of Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey produced by the Brown-Forman Corporation. It is officially the longest running Bourbon on the market today (approximately 145 years as of 2016), and was the first bourbon sold exclusively in sealed bottles. It was first bottled and marketed in 1870 by the former pharmaceutical salesman turned bourbon-merchant George Garvin Brown – the founder of the Brown-Forman Corporation (whose descendants still manage the company). During the Prohibition period from 1920 to 1933, it was one of only 10 brands authorized for lawful production (for medicinal purposes).

Old Forester is produced under the supervision of Master Distiller Chris Morris (as of 2006) at the Brown-Forman distillery in Shively, Kentucky (which is located directly adjacent to the pre-merger Southwest boundary of Louisville) using a mash bill of 72% corn (maize), 18% rye, and 10% malted barley (the same mash bill used for Woodford Reserve). Its mash bill has been described as "pretty standard" and "richer in rye than most bourbons".

Bottling variations include Old Forester Classic (86 proof / 43% abv, 4 years old), Old Forester Signature (100 proof / 50% abv), and Old Forester Birthday Bourbon (introduced in 2002, 95 proof / 47.5% abv in 2010 bottling).

When the product was introduced in the 1870s, bottles of Old Forester were sealed as a way to guard against adulteration and substitution of the contents, and were initially sold in pharmacies as a medicinal product. The innovation introduced with Old Forester was not that it was available in such bottles, but that it was the first bourbon to be exclusively available in this fashion – providing a greater level of assurance of quality for that brand relative to other products in the market. This innovation was enabled and further fueled by emerging advances in the mass production of glass bottles, such as those soon to be developed by Michael Owens. The sealed bottle approach was popular with doctors and with the pharmacists that sold the product, and their approval was touted in advertisements of the product to the general public.