Whiskey bottle placed among lanterns

5 Year Anniversary Stats Post

October 15th, 2025 will be Lost Lantern’s fifth anniversary: five years to the day since we launched our first whiskey collection and began sharing our vision for building a true independent bottler of American whiskey, modeled on the Scotch tradition, with transparency at its heart.

It has been a wild five years since we launched, and we’re blown away by how far we’ve come, thanks to all of your help and support – and to the enthusiastic, eager participation of all our wonderful distillery partners, who are willing to trust us with whiskey and let us share it with whiskey lovers all around the country.

We always had big dreams for Lost Lantern: a vision for creating an independent bottler that played as least a prominent role in the American whiskey world as independent bottlers do in Scotland. A vision for a blending house that brought together whiskies and flavors that had never been blended before, and helped to broaden the world of American whiskey. We are very proud of what we have achieved and built so far, yet we are still on the beginning of this journey: there are many more years of whiskey exploration to come, and the depth and breadth of American whiskey only continues to increase.

For the next few months – the rest of the year, really – we will be taking some time to celebrate this five year milestone. Some of these celebrations will pay homage to how we got here, to the first five years that laid the groundwork for what it means to be an American independent bottler. Other celebrations will look forward, giving some hints to where we’re going and what the future holds. We think there will be something for everyone.

But for now to kick things off, I’d like to start by sharing some stats showing where we’ve come. This will be a longer and more in-depth version of our annual stats post, this time looking back at the first five years.

Travel Stats

Because, as you may know, we visit every single distillery we work with in person… and many more besides. That’s not counting the ones we research extensively and ultimately decide not to visit.

  • Total # of Distilleries Visited: well over 150
  • # of States Where We’ve Visited Distilleries: 50
  • Longest Trip: 8 month cross-country road trip to lay the groundwork for Lost Lantern, 2018-2019
  • Shortest Trip: 1 day visit to a distillery near Tampa, Florida

Believe it or not, we sometimes try to do fun things on our travels too. Here are some stats from those:

  • # of Visits to Wall Drug: 2
  • # of Corn Palaces Visited: 1 (World’s Only Corn Palace)
  • # of National Parks Visited: 25
  • National Park Visited Most Often: Saguaro National Park, Tucson, AZ (right near our friends at Whiskey Del Bac!)
  • Best Pizza Outside of NYC: New Haven, CT
  • Runner-Up: Chicago, if that counts as pizza
  • Best Fried Chicken: New Orleans (runner-up: any Popeye’s)
  • Best Beer Besides Vermont: Seattle
  • Best Ice Cream Besides Vermont: Denver
  • Best Cocktails Made With Malort: Dallas, for some reason?
  • Best Barbecue: This is too heated to answer but it ain’t New England. 

Whiskey Source Stats

In 2020, our first collection featured one blend of American single malts from six distilleries, as well as four single cask offerings, so even with our first release we showed that we planned to source far more widely than any American whiskey company before us. Now, we are fairly confident that we have sourced whiskey from more distilleries than anyone else ever has – or, at least, from more distilleries in more states than anyone has before.

  • Total # of Distillery Partners: 45 (plus more in the pipeline – always!)
  • # of States We’ve Released Whiskey From: 30
  • # of Distilleries We’ve Released Bourbon From: 26
  • # of Distilleries We’ve Released Rye From: 15
  • # of Distilleries We’ve Released American Single Malt From (or used for a blend of American Single Malts): 14

  • Most Distillery Partners From A Single State: tie between Texas (Ironroot Republic, Balcones, Still Austin, Andalusia) and New York (New York Distilling, Breuckelen, Kings County, Finger Lakes Distilling)
  • Most Surprising State We Haven’t Worked With Yet: Vermont
  • Must Surprising State Where We’ve Only Worked With One Distillery: Colorado
  • Regional Blends Released: 1 (Far-Flung Rye I: Midwest Edition)
  • Region Where We’ve Worked With The Most Distilleries: Midwest, easily
  • Regions Where We Haven’t Done That Much: New England, Great Plains, Northern Rockies
  • Most Frequent Distillery Partners: Balcones (Texas), Cedar Ridge (Iowa), Frey Ranch (Nevada), Whiskey Del Bac (Arizona), Boulder Spirits (Colorado), Rich Grain Distilling (Mississippi, closed), Corbin Cash (California), St. George Spirits (California)

Whiskey Stats

 

  • # of Single Casks Released, 2020: 4
  • # of Single Casks Released, 2021: 14 (although 5 of them say 2020 on the label, thanks Covid)
  • # of Single Casks Released, 2022: 16
  • # of Single Casks Released, 2023: 15 
  • # of Single Casks Released, 2024: 17
  • # of Single Casks Released, 2025: 11 so far, not counting the Discovery Club! 

 

  • # of Blends Released, 2020: 1
  • # of Blends Released, 2021: 0 :(
  • # of Blends Released, 2022: 0 :(
  • # of Blends Released, 2023: 3
  • # of Blends Released, 2024: 2
  • # of Blends Released, 2025: 4 so far

This map shows states that we have sourced whiskey from for our multi-distillery blends.

Blend Series sources by state and style
  • # of Single Distillery Series Released, 2023: 6
  • # of Single Distillery Series Released, 2024: 1 + 2 retailer-exclusive releases 
  • # of Single Distillery Series Released, 2025: 1 + 2 retailer-exclusive releases (so far)
  • Single Distillery Series Distillery Partners: Balcones, Whiskey Del Bac, Frey Ranch, St. George Spirits, Kings County, New York Distilling

Whiskey Types Released

Whiskies released by label color, 2020-September 2025

The types and styles of whiskies we’ve released have changed over time, too! The chart above shows the number of labels released (excluding private casks, but including the Discovery Club for 2025). This does not incorporate volume of the releases – so in 2020, American Vatted Malt was just one of the five releases, but it was substantially larger than the four single casks combined. It’s just the number of labels released with that color. That means the Blue label and Other label both include multiple styles – our Blends have ranged from American Single Malt to Bourbon to Rye, and the same is true for the underlying style behind Other whiskies (which also includes some corn and wheat whiskies).

You’ll see that we were balanced early on – the first three years had a relatively even mix between Bourbon and American Single Malt, with rye and other whiskies always being a little more uncommon. In 2023, that started to change, and we began to release substantially more bourbon than before, and a little less single malt (although volume-wise they remained similar in 2023,with Gentle Giant as one of our largest and most popular releases ever). 2024 saw American Single Malt dip a little bit further, and we released slightly fewer whiskies overall.

So far this year, we’ve released a little more American Single Malt and have continued to release a lot of bourbon. We also had an unusually large number of ‘Other’ whiskies this year thanks to the Spring Collection, focused on whiskies with unusual, locally rooted finishes.

You’ll also note that the Blend Series disappeared from 2021 to 2022, and American Vatted Malt was our only multi-distillery blend from our launch in 2020 until the summer of 2023. That was largely a consequence of the pandemic.

And you will note that we have, as of yet, used our Gold label only once – for Mountain Meadow, the collaborative release we created with St. George head blender Dave Smith. Will this label, designated for extremely rare and special whiskies, ever be used again? None can say.

Media, Awards, and Other Highlights

We have been fortunate to have received a lot of media coverage over the years.  These are a few of our favorites or ones that are particularly meaningful, plus a few other notable milestones that don’t fit anywhere else (and a special thanks to our longtime publicist Amy Mironov for helping to spread the word about us!):

Some Of These Are Teases And Some Of Them Aren’t

  • # of whiskies released in Gold label (very unusual and special whiskies): 1
  • # of whiskies released that were distilled in our home state of Vermont: 0
  • # of non-whiskies released: 0
  • # of non-American whiskies released: 0
  • Coolest Experience, 2025: The reason we went to Scotland in March this year
  • What That Reason Was: Wouldn’t you like to know

Fun Closing Stats

  • # of Times We Have Gone to Scotland for Work: 2
  • Size of Lost Lantern Team: 5 to 8 depending who you count
  • # of New Friends Made Along The Way: So, so many – from distillers we already knew but now know much better, to industry folks we had never known before, to retailers and whiskey lovers across the country who we’re now proud to call our friends and colleagues. 

Thank you all for joining us on this whiskey journey, whether you’ve been with us since October 2020 or much more recently… and we hope you will be as excited as we are for the new adventures ahead!

Adam