Woodford Reserve, the Presenting Sponsor of the Kentucky Derby, is honoring “The 
Greatest Two Minutes in Sports” with the release of its 2019 commemorative bottle.
This year marks the 20th anniversary for the Derby bottle and a special year-long exhibit at the Frazier History Museum — the start of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail in downtown Louisville — will celebrate that milestone.
The limited-edition 2019 Woodford Reserve Derby bottle features the colorful artwork of Keith Anderson, the first-ever African American Artist to design the bottle, and showcases thoroughbreds racing across the front. This is the second year that Anderson, who works in the Bourbon Street Café at Brown-Forman headquarters in Louisville, has been chosen to have his work featured on the collectible annual release.
“My vision for this year’s Derby bottle came to me on Derby Day in 2018, when I was at Churchill Downs watching the horses race past me,” Anderson said. “Their sheer power, their colors and the jockeys are seared into my mind — and now featured on the bottle.”
The Derby bottle has been an annual collector’s item anticipated by bourbon and racing fans since 1999. The first four years of the Derby bottle featured simple graphics that celebrated Derby. Beginning in 2003, Woodford Reserve started featuring the work of artists on the bottle.
All 20 Derby bottles, all the original artworks used to design the labels, and other artifacts — including specialty glasses and Woodford Reserve’s $1,000 mint julep cups, which are sold on Derby Day for charity — will be on display in Woodford Reserve & the Kentucky Derby: Two Decades of Artistry, Bourbon and Horse Racing, a temporary exhibit at the Frazier Museum.
The exhibit, which opens March 20 and runs for one year, will be housed within The Spirit of Kentucky®, a large permanent exhibition about the history, craft, and culture of Kentucky bourbon that the Frazier opened last August. The Frazier History Museum is the official starting point of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail®
“The Frazier Museum is the where the world meets Kentucky,” Frazier President and CEO Penny Peavler said. “So we and our partners at Brown-Forman are eager to celebrate the two industries for which Kentucky is world-famous: horse racing and bourbon whiskey.”
The 2019 Kentucky Derby bottle hits shelves nationwide and globally in March with a suggested retail price of $43.99. It can also be purchased starting today at ReserveBar — reservebar.com — in approved states.
