Why This Bourbon Brand Remains One Of The Best Selling In The World Year After Year

Although bourbon can be seen as something as quintessentially American as baseball and warm apple pies cooling on a sill, it has actually experienced quite a boom in the international market in the past couple of decades. Even if bourbon is becoming less popular in recent days — a general downward trend in drinking that has also seen people drink less and less beer — it still remains a must-have spirit in any bar cart regardless of size. While some bourbons enjoy a heap of name value and brand recognition, it's the soft-spoken Jim Beam brand that enjoys the most popularity in the world.

Jim Beam bourbon is not just one of the top-selling and most instantly recognizable brands in whiskey worldwide — it also stands atop the list of best-selling bourbons around the globe, selling about 17 million bottles worldwide in 2023. Part of the reason is the money factor: A bottle of Jim Beam white label sells for about $20 on average, making it an easy entry into bourbon. Another reason is the sheer brand value of Jim Beam, which, though harder to quantify, certainly plays a part when you look at what amateurs and aficionados alike say anecdotally about the brand's popularity. Even though the standard Jim Beam is one of the bourbons we think you should leave on the shelf, it's clear that the bottle is consistent and satisfactory enough to bring Jim Beam all the way to the top of the bourbon world.

Among all whiskeys (with the exceptions of Scotch and Indian whiskey), Jim Beam sold the most bottles of any brand in 2023. While research seems to indicate that all of these documented sales are from the same kind of bourbon (the regular Jim Beam white label), it's difficult to know for sure if this is the case. It's here where it's important to make a distinction: The Jim Beam brand goes way further than the $20 bottom-shelf product. Some of these other bottles probably help with the brand's reach.

Don't be mistaken, that white-labeled Jim Beam bottle you always see at the liquor store is definitely the most-abundant and most immediately recognized Jim Beam product, but there are several other Jim Beam bottles. Take Jim Beam single barrel, for example, which gives you a more artisanal approach to the bourbon for only a few dollars more (and stands as one of the bottom-shelf bourbons you should consider buying). Then there's the slew of flavored Jim Beam products, ranging from pineapple to honey to vanilla (and even warranting their own worst-to-best Chowhound ranking). That's not even including the other brands under the Jim Beam umbrella, such as Knob Creek, Basil Hayden, Baker's, and more. With products as diverse as these, and a reach as far as it has, it's no surprise that Jim Beam takes the cake when it comes to bourbon supremacy.