Review: Maker’s Mark Cellar Aged 2026

Four years into the Maker’s Mark Cellar Aged phenomenon, the limited-edition series of extra-old wheaters has settled in to a solid groove. As has always been the case with this whiskey, it’s a blend of double digit-aged offerings drawn from stock aged not in a hot rickhouse but in a cool limestone cave. Call it a cellar if you’d like.

This year’s whiskey is the oldest yet (or at least a tie with 2024 and 2025), comprised of 49% 11-year-old, 33% 12-year-old, and 18% 14-year-old stock.

Let’s dive in.

Maker’s Mark Cellar Aged 2026 Review

Toasty on the nose, with lots of wood, this is a denser and more tannic whiskey than Cellar Aged 2024 and 2025, and one that takes a little time in glass and on the palate to really settle into its groove. Intense note of anise, clove, and black pepper dominate the nose, barrel char taking hold on the whiskey with a vise-like grip. Fruit is fleeting, limited to dried, black fruits, dipped in dark chocolate.

The palate kicks off with a fairly hard edge, again bold with anise alongside tobacco, and more than a little lumberyard giving this whiskey a more frontier-adjacent quality than I can recall from previous expressions. Fruit starts to perk up about midway through the sip, apples in cinnamon and vanilla dominate before a touch of cherry joins the fun. The darker edges visible on the nose and the palate’s attack remain quite grippy throughout, however, with substantial clove, pepper, and crushed tobacco pushing heavy on the finish. As I mentioned last year, a note of cardamom lingers.

It’s more forceful than previous edition, but not much harder-edged than 2025, and as with all the whiskeys in this series, it’s well worth sampling.

112.1 proof.

A- / $175 [BUY IT NOW FROM FROOTBAT]

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