The Weirdest Whisky Marketing Stunts of 2026 (Ranked)

Whisky likes to present itself as the most serious, tradition-bound category in the drinks industry. Think leather armchairs, centuries of heritage, hushed tones about "terroir." And then, roughly once a month, someone releases something that makes you wonder if anyone in marketing has actually tasted the stuff they're selling. Here's this year's finest nonsense, ranked from "fine, we get it" to "who approved this."

5. Jim Beam's bowling-pin bottle makes a comeback

Jim Beam has revived its Ten Pin bottle — shaped, unambiguously, like a bowling pin — for a 10-year-old Kentucky straight bourbon. It's genuinely a decent whiskey inside bizarre packaging, which is arguably the most honest form of gimmick: nobody's pretending the shape improves the liquid.

4. A whisky finished in ice wine casks

Chattanooga Whiskey's latest release spent time in casks that previously held Moldovan ice wine, a dessert wine made from grapes frozen on the vine. It's an unusual cask type for whisky, and credit where due, at least it's a real point of difference rather than a marketing invention.

3. Golf resort whisky collaborations are apparently a category now

GlenDronach has launched a whisky collaboration series with the Gleneagles golf resort, called "Moments from The Glorious Playground." We are not making that name up. The whisky itself is a 14-year-old sherry cask malt which is no doubt very good, because GlenDronach usually is. The branding reads like it was written by someone who has recently discovered golf exists.

2. A barley wine cask finish, because apparently regular casks got boring

Copperworks' latest American Single Malt collaboration was finished in barley wine casks — beer, essentially, aged in a way that makes it strong and sweet enough to influence a whisky. Cask finishing has quietly gone from "an interesting experiment with sherry and port" to "let's see what happens if we put whisky in literally anything," and this is very much that trend at full speed.

1. "Sexy Motor Oil" whiskey

Breckenridge Distillery's beer-barreled whiskey is, and we cannot stress this enough, actually called Sexy Motor Oil. It's now on its third edition, which means enough people have bought it that the name is apparently working. At 109.5 proof, it's not shy about strength either. We have no notes. We simply admire the commitment.

The actual takeaway

Buried under the stunt marketing, most of this points at something real: cask-finishing has become the entire industry's favourite lever to pull, and whisky brands increasingly need a hook — a collaboration, an unusual cask, a name nobody will forget — just to get noticed in a category releasing more limited editions than ever. Some of it works because the whisky underneath is genuinely good. Some of it is just a bowling pin with bourbon in it. Either way, it's rarely boring right now.

Looking for something with a bit more restraint on the label? Browse the full whisky range — no bowling pins in sight.