Deep in the rolling hills of southern Indiana, just a stone’s throw from the Kentucky line, a little outfit called Starlight Distillery just pulled off something most people thought was impossible. They took a bourbon finished in rare Japanese Mizunara oak, priced it at around 150 bucks, and walked away with the title of Best Overall Bourbon in the entire world for 2025. Not best craft bourbon, not best small-batch, not best up-and-comer. Best. Period.
The award came at the Top Shelf 2025 Awards Gala in San Francisco, the black-tie finale where the absolute cream of the San Francisco World Spirits Competition gets narrowed down even further. Judges taste only Double Gold medalists, blind, over multiple days, and then pick the single finest bottle in each major category. When they announced Starlight Distillery’s Japanese Mizunara Reserve Finished Bourbon as the top dog, more than a few big-name Kentucky producers had to pick their jaws up off the floor.
Image credit: Starlight Distillery
The whiskey itself is a seven-year-old blend of two different mash bills the Hubers cook up on their own farm. One is 60% corn, 20% rye, and 20% malted barley. The other drops the corn to 51%, keeps the rye at 20%, adds the same malted barley, and throws in 9% wheat for a softer touch. Every kernel of corn and every grain of wheat comes straight off the Huber fields. The rye comes from neighbors they’ve known for years. Nothing shipped in from halfway across the country.
They ferment it slow, seven full days in closed-top tanks using a sweet mash process, then run it through double pot stills the old-fashioned way. New charred American oak barrels take over for seven years. Only then do they move the whiskey into those scarce Mizunara casks from Japan, rare stuff made from oak that can take 200 years to grow big enough for coopering, for another five to six months. Eight barrels usually go into each batch, bottled at whatever cask strength they hit, normally 112 to 116 proof. No chill-filtering, no funny business.
The judges at the 2025 San Francisco World Spirits Competition had already given it 99 points out of 100 and a Double Gold before Top Shelf even started. When the final round came, it didn’t just win Best Special Barrel-Finished Bourbon; it beat every straight bourbon, every small batch, every single barrel entered and claimed the overall crown.
The Huber family wasn’t done there. Their straight Single Barrel Bourbon, no fancy finishing, no extra steps, also took home Best Craft Distillery Whiskey at the same gala. Two swings, two home runs.
Most folks know the Hubers for Huber’s Orchard, Winery & Vineyards, one of the biggest farm-wineries in the Midwest. The family has been working that same Indiana dirt since 1843. They started distilling fruit brandies in the early 2000s, then added bourbon in 2013 once the laws loosened up. Everything still happens on the same 800-acre spread outside Borden, Indiana, about 20 minutes northwest of Louisville. You can stand in the rickhouse, look out the door, and see the exact fields that grew the corn you’re about to drink.
For a long time craft distilleries were treated like the kid brother of the bourbon world, nice try, maybe one day you’ll be ready for the big leagues. Starlight just proved the little guy with the right dirt, the right barrels, and the patience to wait seven full years can stand toe-to-toe with anyone. And win.
That Mizunara finish is the wildcard everybody’s talking about. Japanese oak is notoriously hard to work with; it’s porous, leaks like crazy when it’s young, and costs a fortune. But when it’s done right, it adds this sandalwood, coconut, and incense note you just don’t get from American or European oak. On top of the vanilla, caramel, and baking-spice backbone of a solid Indiana bourbon, the combination turned heads and apparently blew the judges away.
You won’t find cases of this stuff stacked to the ceiling at every liquor store. Production is tiny, and once the current batch is gone, that’s it until the next one is ready. If you’re the type who keeps an eye out for something different to pour when the game’s on or the fire’s going late, this is one to hunt down.
Starlight Distillery just rewrote the map. Best bourbon in the world doesn’t have to come from a famous Kentucky county or carry a century-old name. Sometimes it comes from a family farm in Indiana that decided to grow its own grain, take its time, and try something nobody else was doing.
And right now, that $150 bottle is the one every serious bourbon drinker needs to taste at least once.
