The American Spirits Council of Tasters and I just announced the medal winners of the 2024 ASCOT Awards. This year, we fielded more than 1,200 entries that included whiskeys, tequilas, bourbons and more.

Plus, my personal top scores from the first round earn an automatic bid into my annual end-of-year Top 100 blind tasting. These include Distillerium No Mans Whizkey Rye, Larceny A124 Barrel Proof, Epoch Reserve Maryland Straight Rye Whiskey, Ben Holladay Rickhouse Proof 6 Year Old Bourbon and Kentucky Peerless Small Batch.

As for the competition itself, 52 judges blind-tasted each entry, determining the winners in the Double Platinum, Platinum, Gold and Honorable Mention categories. Top medalists were blind tasted again by 10 judges to determine Best in Show.

The top-scoring spirits move on to the championship rounds, where The American Spirits Council Of Tasters will select the Best In Category and Best In Class winners. The ASCOT Awards finals is set to air on Spirits Network on Tuesday, June 4th. Individuals can also tune-in on Apple TV and VIZIO WatchFree+ Channel 1089.

See the full list of medalists, here: ascotawards.com/tasting/winners

In addition to the tasting awards, brands were awarded in marketing and design categories including marketing/promotion campaigns, public relations, advertising, media, bottle, label and packaging design, social media and more.

This year’s leading medalists included Sazerac with 46 medals, Heaven Hill Brands with 40 medals, Proximo Spirits with 33 medals and Luxco with 28 medals. Additionally, Pernod-Ricard earned 22 total medals and the most Double Platinums out of all entries (12), due to an impressive showing of its whiskey portfolio, and independent companies Dark Arts Whiskey House and Hard Truth Distilling showed out with 10 medals each.