Post-Memorial Day 2026 Restock Guide: 8 Bottles to Reorder Tuesday for the Rest of Summer
It's Memorial Day. Your cookout is winding down. Somebody's still nursing the last finger of Eagle Rare 10 Year, and you're staring at a bottle of Buffalo Trace that started the day full and is now showing the label on the back side. The mint julep pitcher has one warm round of crushed ice and not much else. You already knew this was coming — every Memorial Day weekend ends with one or two bottles standing in for the four or five you actually needed.
Here's the practical news: tomorrow morning the shipping clock resets. UPS Ground from our New Jersey warehouse leaves first thing Tuesday, and most of the lower 48 sees those packages 1–4 business days later. No air-freight surcharges. No "must arrive Friday" panic. Just normal-rate restock for the rest of the summer — which, depending on where you live, runs straight through July 4, July 16 (National Daiquiri Day), Labor Day weekend, and the start of football season.
So this is the post-Memorial-Day restock guide: the eight bottles most likely to have run out at your cookout, organized so you can put together a single Tuesday order and not think about bourbon shopping again until late July. Every price is the live store price as of this morning. Every bottle is in stock right now.
The 8 bottles in this guide
The Tuesday-morning math
Our New Jersey warehouse is one of the better positions in the country for restock shipping — UPS Ground from Bergen County reaches roughly 75% of US households in two business days or fewer. An order placed by 2 PM ET Tuesday May 26 typically arrives:
- Wednesday, May 27 — NY metro, most of NJ, Philly, eastern PA
- Thursday, May 28 — Boston, DC, Baltimore, RI, CT, MD, VA, OH, MI, IL
- Friday, May 29 — Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte, Minneapolis, Indianapolis
- Monday, June 1 — Texas, Florida, the Carolinas (most addresses), Wisconsin, Iowa
- Tuesday–Wednesday, June 2–3 — Colorado, the Mountain West, the West Coast
If you read our Saturday order guide or Sunday day-of guide, you already know this — UPS Air closed Friday afternoon and most of the country has been on "Tuesday arrival or later" since Saturday morning. The good news: that's not a problem anymore. Tuesday is here.
The four cookout workhorses (under $50)
These are the bottles that disappear fastest at any backyard party, because they're the ones non-bourbon-snob guests drink straight from the shelf without needing a special pour. Stock at least two of these per ten guests if you're hosting again before September.
Wild Turkey 101 ($32.99). The benchmark high-rye bourbon for cocktails. At 101 proof it cuts through ice and citrus in an Old Fashioned, a julep, or a paper plane without disappearing. If you're hosting any cookout with five-plus guests and you don't know what they drink, this is the always-correct first bottle in the cabinet. (A heads-up: this product is currently missing its catalog photo — we know, the merchant team is on it. The bottle ships normally.)
Maker's Mark ($37.09). The 90-proof wheated workhorse, and the one your friends-of-friends ask for by name. Soft, buttery, easy. Pour it neat, pour it on the rocks, pour it into a Manhattan — it can't go wrong. The other reason Maker's runs out at cookouts: it's the bottle people pour for themselves "just one more" without asking.
Four Roses Small Batch ($37.99). A blend of four of Four Roses' ten signature recipes — soft fruit, gentle baking spice, a quiet vanilla finish. Drinks above its price point neat, and makes a better Old Fashioned than most $60 bourbons. If your group has been working through Maker's all winter, Four Roses Small Batch is the natural rotation pour for summer.
Knob Creek 9 Year ($49.99). The 100-proof, 9-year-aged daily-pour. Knob Creek 9 is the bottle that wins blind tastings against bourbons twice its price, especially in cocktails where you want a strong oak-and-caramel backbone that won't get bullied by syrup or bitters. We covered this one in detail in our Old Fashioned batch guide two weeks ago — it batches beautifully.
The two upgrade pours ($40–$50)
If your friends know enough to ask "what is this?" when you pour it neat, these are the two bottles that earn the question. Both are stories you can tell in one sentence over the rim of a Glencairn.
Maker's Mark 46 ($44.99). Standard Maker's spent a few extra months finishing in barrels with seared French oak staves dropped in. Result: same soft wheated body, plus a layer of vanilla-and-toasted-caramel that turns it from "cookout bottle" into "fireside sipping bottle." A good Father's Day-prep bottle, too, if Dad's a Maker's drinker — covered in detail in yesterday's Wheated Bourbon Gift Guide.
Wild Turkey Longbranch ($39.99). Matthew McConaughey's collaboration with Eddie Russell — Wild Turkey aged eight years, then refined with Texas mesquite-charred oak. The mesquite gives it a subtle smoke note you don't get in straight Wild Turkey, and it pours beautifully neat for guests who would normally drink Scotch. The bottle's a conversation starter too.
The two allocated splurges ($50 and up)
Saving these for the end of the article because they're the ones most likely to disappear from your cabinet first when guests notice the labels. Order them now while they're in stock — Buffalo Trace bottles in particular tend to come and go.
Eagle Rare 10 Year ($49.99). Buffalo Trace Distillery's 10-year-aged single-mash-bill bourbon. Half the price of Blanton's, made at the same distillery, with a smoother profile (more caramel, less spice). The bottle you pour after dinner when the cookout has thinned to the four people you actually wanted to drink with anyway. Almost impossible to find on Kentucky shelves at retail; the easier path is direct shipping.
Buffalo Trace ($78.99). The flagship bourbon from the most-allocated distillery in America. Buffalo Trace's "standard" 90-proof bottling is the gateway to the rest of the BT lineup (Eagle Rare, Blanton's, Weller, E.H. Taylor, Stagg, George T. Stagg), and despite being the easiest to find in the lineup, it still moves quickly. The taste profile — toffee, vanilla, gentle oak, a clean finish — is so consistently good across so many price points that bartenders use it as the standard against which everything else gets judged.
What to skip on the Tuesday order
Don't restock yet on bottles you only need for July 4 or Labor Day-specific cocktails. Tequila for margaritas, rum for daiquiris and tiki, gin for tonics — those can wait until two weeks before whatever next weekend you're hosting. Memorial Day was the bourbon-and-whiskey holiday by tradition (the long weekend lands at the start of cocktail season, when most people are pulling out brown spirits for grilling pairings); the next major brown-spirits cookout date isn't until July 4. Use the intervening five weeks to stock up at full Ground-shipping rates rather than panicking again in late June.
One exception: if there's a Father's Day gift in the lineup, that's June 21 — 27 days from this Tuesday. Order Father's Day bottles by mid-June at the latest to avoid the same week-of rush we just lived through with Memorial Day. We've published three Father's Day guides over the last week to help with selection: an early Father's Day preview (for the planners), a daily-pour under-$60 guide (for dads who actually drink their bourbon rather than displaying it), and yesterday's wheated bourbon guide (for the Maker's-loyalist dad). Today's companion piece on single-barrel Father's Day picks is up now too.
One last thought: the bottle you wish you'd had
The most common Memorial Day text message we got at the warehouse this weekend wasn't "do you ship today?" — it was "do you have Blanton's in stock?" Allocated bourbons (Blanton's, the Weller line, the Stagg releases, the E.H. Taylor lineup) are the bottles people remember they want when they see them at someone else's cookout. If you saw something this weekend that made you say "I need to find that," restock that bottle Tuesday before the rest of the country has the same idea. Browse our best-sellers collection and the broader bourbon catalog for the rest of the inventory — there are more single-barrel and allocated options than most state shelves carry.
And if you didn't run out of anything this weekend? Congratulations — you over-bought, which is the correct strategy. Stock the rest of summer at standard Ground rates while we all collectively catch our breath before July 4.
