The ninth annual Texas Whiskey Festival made one thing crystal clear this spring: Texas whiskey isn't playing catch-up to anyone anymore. Held in Austin, the festival's 2026 edition delivered its annual blind tasting results, and the bottles that rose to the top tell a story about a whiskey culture that has fully found its footing.
Garrison Brothers Cowboy Bourbon walked away with two of the biggest honors of the night — Best Bourbon and the overall must-try whiskey across every category entered. That's not a small feat in a state that takes its spirits as seriously as it takes its football.
How the Judging Works
Before getting into the bottles themselves, it's worth understanding what the Texas Whiskey Festival's awards program actually is. Every year, whiskeys entered into the competition are grouped by style and evaluated completely blind. Judges don't know what they're tasting, who made it, or how much it costs. The criteria lean toward drinkability — what actually tastes good in the glass — rather than checking purely technical boxes.
Jake Clements, the founder of the Texas Whiskey Festival, summed up the philosophy plainly: "This tasting is about what people actually enjoy drinking, not just what checks technical boxes. Each of these bottles earned its place in the glass and reflects where Texas whiskey is today — bold, diverse, and continuing to evolve."
That approach has given the festival's results a credibility that purely technical competitions sometimes lack. When something wins here, it means real people wanted to keep drinking it.
The Bourbon That Beat Everyone
Garrison Brothers has been one of the names most associated with Texas bourbon since the category started getting serious national attention, and the Cowboy Bourbon is the expression that defines what the distillery is chasing. Aged a minimum of six years and bottled at 146.4 proof, this is not a whiskey built for the timid.
That proof number is worth pausing on. Most bourbons sit somewhere in the 80 to 120 proof range. Coming in at 146.4 proof puts Cowboy Bourbon in rare company, and doing it in a way that still earns top honors in a blind drinkability-focused competition says something about the craftsmanship behind it. The expression is released annually and has built a loyal following among collectors who line up for it each year.
Clements described the broader trend driving results like this one: "Texas whiskey reflects where it's made and who's making it — the heat, the grain, the independence. What we're seeing now is a category coming into its own, with distillers writing their own playbook. That's what makes it so compelling."
Texas summers are brutal, and that heat accelerates the aging process inside the barrels. What takes a Kentucky distillery a decade to achieve can happen faster in the Texas Hill Country climate, but it also demands more skill to manage. Garrison Brothers has spent years learning how to work with those conditions rather than fight them.
Rye Done the Texas Way
Rye whiskey has its own corner of the Texas whiskey story, and the 2026 must-try in that category came from Koopers Family Distillery. Their Barrel Reserve Rye is a blend of straight rye whiskeys, each aged somewhere between four and seven years. The barrels used are a mix of first-fill and second-fill, which brings different flavor contributions from each type.
After the blending is done, the team at Koopers takes it one step further — finishing the blend with toasted oak staves before bottling it at barrel proof. That combination of age, blending strategy, and finishing work gives this rye a layered complexity that clearly stood out to the blind tasting panel.
Rye whiskey demands more of a distiller in some ways than bourbon. The grain bill creates more production challenges, and getting the spice and body into balance takes genuine skill. The fact that Koopers is doing that at barrel proof — no water added to bring it down — while still producing something judges wanted to keep coming back to, speaks to where small Texas distilleries have arrived.
Andalusia Wins Twice
One of the bigger stories from the 2026 results was Andalusia Whiskey Co. claiming the top spot in not one but two separate categories — malt whiskey and cask-finished whiskey. That kind of double performance in a blind tasting is rare and reflects the depth of what the distillery has built.
For malt whiskey, the winner was the Andalusia Cigar Malt. This is a limited-edition American single malt built through a collaboration between the distillery and master blender Irene Tan. It's peated — meaning the malt is dried over peat smoke before distilling, a technique borrowed from Scottish tradition — and then finished in wine casks. The result is a whiskey that was designed from the ground up to sit alongside a great cigar, though it clearly holds its own without one.
Andalusia is considered one of the top grain-to-glass operations in Texas, which means they control the process from raw grain all the way to the bottle. That level of control over every variable is part of what allows them to produce something as specific and deliberate as the Cigar Malt.
Their second win came in the cask-finished category with the Madeira Cask Stryker. This American single malt starts with grains that have been smoked using three different woods — oak, mesquite, and apple — before going through distillation. After that, the whiskey spends six months resting in barrels that previously held Madeira, the Portuguese fortified wine known for its richness and dried fruit character.
Six months in ex-Madeira casks might not sound like a long time, but finishing periods work differently than primary aging. The whiskey arrives at those barrels already developed, and the cask interaction happens quickly. The combination of the smoked grain base and the Madeira finish landed at the top of its category when judges didn't know what they were drinking.
Light Whiskey Gets Its Moment
Light whiskey isn't a category that gets a lot of coverage in the mainstream whiskey conversation, but it has a real history in American spirits. The category was developed in the late 1960s as big distilling brands tried to compete with vodka and other clear spirits that were pulling market share. Light whiskey is a higher-proof distillate that sits between traditional American whiskey and neutral grain spirit, resulting in a lighter body and more delicate character.
Austin Craft Spirits has become something of a specialist in this style, and their Austin 121 expression took the top honors in the category at the 2026 festival. Austin 121 is a cask-strength release, meaning the proof varies from barrel to barrel rather than being standardized across the bottling. That variability is part of the point — each release is its own thing.
The People Chose Milam & Green
Beyond the judge-decided categories, the festival also runs a People's Choice Award determined by the attendees on the night of the event. This year that honor went to Milam & Green Whiskey.
There was a hiccup in the announcement process — an incorrect winner was initially announced during the festival before the final verified results confirmed Milam & Green as the actual recipient. The festival acknowledged the error and confirmed the corrected result following the event.
The People's Choice outcome is worth paying attention to separately from the judging panel results. These are festival attendees voting with their palates in real time — no technical training required, just honest reactions to what they're drinking. Milam & Green landing there says something about the broad appeal of what they're producing.
What the 2026 Results Mean for Texas Whiskey
Taken together, the 2026 Texas Whiskey Festival results paint a portrait of a whiskey region operating with genuine confidence. The bottles that rose to the top weren't playing it safe. High-proof bourbon. Barrel-proof rye. Peated single malt finished in wine casks. Smoke-distilled whiskey rested in Madeira barrels. These are producers making deliberate, specific choices and backing them up.
Texas has some natural advantages in whiskey production — the grain quality, the climate, the sheer scale of agricultural resources in the state — but advantages on paper don't automatically translate into good whiskey. What the festival results show year after year is that Texas distillers are converting those advantages into bottles worth seeking out.
The category is also broader than it used to be. A conversation about Texas whiskey ten years ago would have started and ended with bourbon. Now the conversation includes rye, American single malt, light whiskey, and cask-finished expressions, with serious producers competing across all of them.
The Bottles to Track Down
For anyone looking to explore what came out of the 2026 Texas Whiskey Festival, the list to work through is straightforward. Garrison Brothers Cowboy Bourbon is the headline, and it's worth the effort to find — the annual release sells out quickly. Koopers Family Barrel Reserve Rye is the rye to chase, and the Andalusia Cigar Malt and Madeira Cask Stryker reward anyone willing to dig into the American single malt space.
Austin Craft Spirits' Austin 121 is the entry point into light whiskey for anyone who hasn't explored the category, and Milam & Green is worth picking up on the strength of the crowd response alone.
Texas whiskey has been building toward something for the better part of a decade. The 2026 results suggest it has arrived.
