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Midnight Heist: The Story Behind Five Star Liquor’s 7-Year Larceny Private Single Barrel
Five Star Liquor in Hot Springs has released a 7-year, 127-proof Larceny Private Single Barrel from Heaven Hill’s Rickhouse Y. But the real story is hidden in the Midnight Heist artwork, the skeleton key, and the legend of John E. Fitzgerald.
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Last Updated on August 11, 2026 by Justin Jones
ARKANSAS LIQUOR • FEATURE STORY
A Locked Rickhouse.
A Skeleton Key.
One Chosen Barrel.
Five Star Liquor in Hot Springs has released a seven-year-old, 127-proof Larceny Private Single Barrel from Heaven Hill’s Rickhouse Y. The numbers are impressive, but they are not what makes this bottle interesting to me.
To understand this bottle, you have to understand the story behind the key.
WATCH THE STORY
Midnight Heist
A locked rickhouse. A skeleton key. One chosen barrel.
The key chose the barrel.
Confession of a Bourbon Tater
Anyone who knows me knows three things.
I love a good story.
I love good history.
And I absolutely LOVE a good tater sticker.
I am not even going to pretend otherwise. By practically every modern bourbon definition, I am a tater.
I have bought whiskey because of the label. I have bought whiskey because of the sticker. Movie-themed, historical, political, funny, ridiculous, beautiful, completely over the top, it really does not matter. Put a great piece of artwork on a private barrel and there is a very real possibility that you are getting my money.
Sometimes the whiskey behind the label turns out to be phenomenal. Sometimes it doesn’t. That is part of the fun.
But there is something even better than a great-looking bottle. It is when somebody actually gives the artwork a reason to exist.
When the sticker has a story behind it, the bottle becomes something more than whiskey.
That is exactly what happened with this Larceny Private Single Barrel from Five Star Liquor in Hot Springs.
WHY ARKANSAS LIQUOR EXISTS
The Story Is Usually the Part We Never Get
That love of the story behind a bottle is one of the biggest reasons I created Arkansas Liquor.
Liquor stores are usually very good at telling us that something arrived. They post a photograph. They give us the proof. Maybe the age. Maybe the price. Sometimes there is a barrel number and a couple of tasting notes.
AVAILABLE NOW.
That certainly tells us how to buy the whiskey. But it does not necessarily tell us why we should care about it.
Why was this barrel selected? Where did it age? Why is there a key on the bottle? Why is the whiskey called Larceny? Who was Fitzgerald? Why does a private single barrel make that history particularly interesting? And what in the world does a man wandering through a dark rickhouse at midnight have to do with any of it?
Those are the questions I enjoy.
I created Arkansas Liquor because I wanted a place where we could go beyond the shelf tag and tell the full story behind the bottle. The history. The distillery. The people. The warehouses. The strange pieces of bourbon folklore. The details hidden in the artwork. The things somebody had to think about before putting that label on the bottle.
And this Five Star Larceny pick is almost a perfect example of why that matters.
Because the “tater sticker” on this bottle has a lot more meaning than you might realize from simply looking at it.
The Man Who Had the Keys
Long before there was Larceny Bourbon, there was John E. Fitzgerald.
Or, perhaps more accurately, there was the legend of John E. Fitzgerald.
That distinction matters. Like many of bourbon’s best stories, the Fitzgerald tale exists somewhere between documented whiskey history and folklore repeated across generations.
Heaven Hill’s telling of the story casts Fitzgerald as a bonded U.S. Treasury agent during the late nineteenth century. That job allegedly gave him something incredibly valuable inside a whiskey warehouse:
ACCESS.
Bonded warehouses were under federal supervision. Treasury agents were among the relatively small group of people who could legitimately enter them.
And according to the story that eventually became central to the Larceny brand, Fitzgerald possessed the keys.
Not metaphorical keys.
The actual keys to the rickhouse.
Imagine a Kentucky whiskey warehouse late at night. Rows upon rows of barrels. Heavy wooden beams. The smell of oak and whiskey hanging in the air. Almost nobody around.
And one man who could unlock the door.
Fitzgerald Apparently Had Good Taste
According to the story, Fitzgerald did not simply wander into these warehouses to admire the barrels.
He sampled them.
And supposedly, when he found one he particularly liked, some of the whiskey mysteriously disappeared.
Eventually workers reportedly began noticing something unusual. Certain barrels seemed lighter than they ought to have been. Someone had apparently been helping himself to the whiskey.
But there was another part to the story.
Those barrels reportedly had something in common.
They were good.
So good that the barrels supposedly became known as the “Fitzgerald barrels.”
Think about what makes that story so wonderful. Fitzgerald supposedly had access to warehouses filled with whiskey. He could have taken from any barrel. But the legend says he selected certain barrels because he believed those barrels were better than the others.
He was not merely stealing whiskey. In a strange way, he was picking barrels.
From Fitzgerald to Larceny
The Fitzgerald name eventually became one of the most recognizable names in American whiskey through Old Fitzgerald. Today, Heaven Hill owns Old Fitzgerald and continues the Fitzgerald connection through its wheated bourbon family.
Heaven Hill introduced Larceny Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey in 2012. The name itself is essentially a wink at the Fitzgerald legend.
LARCENY.
The crime of taking someone else’s property. If the old story is to be believed, Fitzgerald’s late-night visits to the whiskey warehouse certainly qualified.
Even the modern Larceny bottle continues the story. Look closely and you will find the key.
The key represents Fitzgerald. The key represents access. The key represents the warehouse. Most importantly, the key represents the ability to get to those barrels.
The Whiskey Behind the Story
Larceny is Heaven Hill’s wheated bourbon. Its mash bill is:
68%
Corn
20%
Wheat
12%
Malted Barley
There is no rye. Wheat takes its place as the secondary grain, producing the softer and sweeter profile commonly associated with wheated bourbon.
But mash bill is only one part of the equation. Aging changes things. Warehouse location changes things. Temperature changes things. And the individual oak barrel changes things.
One Barrel Instead of a Batch
Most bourbon drinkers familiar with higher-proof Larceny probably know Larceny Barrel Proof. Those national releases are created by combining multiple mature barrels and bottling the whiskey at barrel proof.
A private single barrel turns that idea upside down.
You pick one barrel.
That barrel keeps its own identity. Its own proof. Its own warehouse history. Its own personality. And when the whiskey from that barrel is gone, there is no recreating it.
That brings us directly back to Fitzgerald.
Because what was the Fitzgerald legend really about?
Not selecting a brand.
Not selecting a batch.
Selecting a barrel.
THE BARREL
Five Star Liquor Finds Its Barrel
Five Star Liquor’s new release is labeled Larceny Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, Private Single Barrel, Hand Picked by Five Star Liquor.
Barrel Number: 8232948
Rickhouse: Y
Floor: 4
Age: 7 Years
Proof: 127
ABV: 63.5%
Bottling: Barrel Proof
Seven Years in Rickhouse Y
Barrel 8232948 spent seven years aging in Heaven Hill’s Rickhouse Y.
Bourbon warehouses are not uniform environments. They heat. They cool. Kentucky summers push temperatures upward. Winters send them falling again. That movement helps drive whiskey repeatedly into and out of the oak.
Even inside the same warehouse, barrels can experience different conditions depending on where they rest. Upper floors generally become hotter. Lower floors stay cooler. Humidity differs. Evaporation differs. Proof can develop differently.
Five Star’s barrel spent those seven years on Floor 4, in the middle portion of its aging environment rather than one of the more extreme upper or lower positions.
THE ADDRESS OF A SINGLE BARREL
Rickhouse Y.
Floor 4.
Barrel 8232948.
127 Proof.
There is something wonderful about that specificity. The whiskey has an address.
Rickhouse Y is located on Heaven Hill’s main campus in Bardstown, Kentucky. It is not just another warehouse designation. Heaven Hill has repeatedly used Rickhouse Y for significant whiskey, and the company stores some of its milestone barrels there. Heaven Hill’s 10 millionth barrel, for example, was placed in Rickhouse Y. The 2026 22-Year Heaven Hill Heritage Collection also came from barrels aged on the fifth and sixth floors of Rickhouse Y.
THE ARTWORK
And This Is Where the Sticker Gets Really Good
When I first looked at the Midnight Heist design, I liked it immediately. Again, I am a tater. Put a dramatic whiskey design in front of me with an old rickhouse and a giant skeleton key and you already have my attention.
But the more I looked at it, the more I realized this wasn’t just a cool sticker.
Someone actually thought about what Larceny represents.
FULL ARTWORK REFERENCE
MIDNIGHT HEIST
The title sounds like something out of a movie. Within the context of Larceny, it is almost perfect.
The Fitzgerald legend is essentially a bourbon heist. A man with privileged access enters a warehouse. He knows which barrels he wants. Whiskey disappears. Nobody quite knows exactly how much disappeared or precisely how much of the story is true.
The Dark Rickhouse
At the center of the artwork is a dark whiskey warehouse. Wooden beams. Rows of barrels. A warm amber glow somewhere deep inside. The entire image feels like a place that should be closed for the night.
Which is exactly the point.
The Man in the Shadows
Walking into the rickhouse is a man dressed in dark clothing. His face is mostly hidden. He is not intended to be a historically precise portrait. He represents the mythology of John E. Fitzgerald, the mysterious figure with access to the whiskey and the palate that supposedly knew which barrels were worth visiting.
The Skeleton Key
He is carrying a large key. Another ornate key appears above the words MIDNIGHT HEIST.
This may be my favorite piece of the entire concept because the key already exists in Larceny’s identity. Once you understand the Fitzgerald story, you realize that it is not random branding.
“The Key Chose the Barrel.”
Five words, but there is a lot packed into them.
The key allowed Fitzgerald into the warehouse. According to the legend, his palate decided which barrels he wanted. Now think about what Five Star has done. Out of a group of barrels, one was selected.
That one.
The barrel was chosen. More than a century after Fitzgerald supposedly wandered through whiskey warehouses looking for the good stuff, another Larceny barrel has been singled out.
The Lock and Keyhole
On the opposite side is an ornate lock with a prominent keyhole. A lock represents something you are not supposed to access. The warehouse is locked. The whiskey is protected. The barrels are secured.
The lock only matters because someone has the key.
The Pocket Watch
Then there is the enormous antique pocket watch resting in the foreground.
Midnight.
The warehouse has gone quiet. The doors should be locked. The barrels are resting. According to our romanticized version of bourbon history, Fitzgerald is just getting started.
But the watch works on another level too, because bourbon is fundamentally a product of time.
Barrel 8232948 spent seven years waiting. Seven years of summers. Seven years of winters. Seven years of whiskey moving through oak. Seven years of evaporation. Seven years where nobody could simply press a button and make it mature faster.
ONE OF MY FAVORITE LINES ON THE ARTWORK
ONE BARREL.
ONE NIGHT.
GONE FOREVER.
For the Fitzgerald legend, the reference is obvious. Whiskey disappeared. But for a modern private barrel, the phrase has another meaning.
There is only one Barrel 8232948.
Once the bottles produced from it are sold, that barrel is gone. Another Larceny private barrel may come along, but it will never be this whiskey.
“Hand Selected for Exceptional Character”
Again, we come back to the thing connecting the legend and the whiskey.
Selection.
The Fitzgerald story is compelling because he supposedly recognized certain barrels as being better than others. A modern private barrel selection is based around the same premise.
Individual barrels are different. Someone tastes them. Someone chooses. Someone puts their reputation behind the decision.
This one becomes the barrel.
Why the Artwork Means More Than a Sticker
This is where my bourbon-tater tendencies collide with the reason Arkansas Liquor exists.
I could look at this bottle and say:
“Larceny. Seven years. 127 proof. Five Star store pick.”
Done.
That is enough information to sell whiskey.
But look at everything we would miss.
- We would miss Fitzgerald.
- We would miss the legend of the warehouse keys.
- We would miss the connection to Old Fitzgerald.
- We would miss why Heaven Hill called the whiskey Larceny.
- We would miss why the key is on the bottle.
- We would miss why a private single barrel connects so perfectly with the Fitzgerald legend.
- We would completely miss why the Midnight Heist artwork looks the way it does.
The tater sticker is not simply decoration.
It is a history lesson hiding on a bottle of bourbon.
Is the Fitzgerald Story Completely True?
This is also where good whiskey storytelling requires a little restraint.
The romantic version of John E. Fitzgerald wandering into bonded warehouses and secretly taking whiskey from the best barrels is exactly that: a legend.
There are historical questions surrounding portions of the Fitzgerald story, and bourbon history is notoriously complicated. Brands change hands. Distilleries close. Names are sold. Stories evolve. Marketing departments simplify complicated timelines. Memories become folklore.
I do not think acknowledging that diminishes the story.
Actually, I think it makes it better.
This is how bourbon culture works. Part history. Part tradition. Part storytelling. And sometimes just enough mystery to leave us arguing about it over a glass.
Barrel 8232948 Becomes the Next Chapter
Which brings us back to Hot Springs.
Five Star Liquor now has its own little chapter in that much larger story.
A seven-year-old Larceny bourbon.
One barrel.
Rickhouse Y.
Floor 4.
127 proof.
Barrel 8232948.
Hand selected for Five Star Liquor.
That alone makes it interesting whiskey.
But once you understand what the Larceny name represents, the bottle becomes something more.
A private single barrel is almost the perfect modern expression of the Fitzgerald legend.
Walk into a world filled with barrels.
Taste them.
Find the one that stands apart.
Choose it.
Take that one home.
Only this time, everyone involved presumably completed the appropriate paperwork first.
The Bottle Gives Us the Numbers.
The Artwork Gives Us the Story.
I love proof. I love age statements. Give me a barrel number, rickhouse and floor and I will happily start digging into it.
But numbers are not what make whiskey culture interesting.
People and stories do.
Sometimes a sticker makes you curious enough to go looking for those stories.
I looked at Midnight Heist and saw a cool private barrel design. Then I noticed the key. Then the man entering the warehouse. Then the lock. Then the clock. Then the words:
THE KEY CHOSE THE BARREL.
And suddenly this was no longer simply a cool sticker.
It was a visual retelling of the legend behind Larceny.
That is exactly the kind of thing I wanted Arkansas Liquor to explore when I created it.
Not simply:
“Here’s a bottle. Go buy it.”
But:
“Here’s a bottle.
Now let me tell you why it is interesting.”
Because sometimes the best thing about whiskey isn’t what is printed in 12-point type on the back label.
Sometimes it is the story somebody almost forgot to tell you.
And in this case, that story begins with a locked whiskey warehouse, a man named Fitzgerald and a key.
MORE THAN A CENTURY LATER, THE KEY HAS APPARENTLY CHOSEN ANOTHER BARREL.
8232948
Seven Years Old
Rickhouse Y • Floor 4
127 Proof
Hand Picked by Five Star Liquor
MIDNIGHT HEIST
The Key Chose the Barrel.
Five Star Liquor • Hot Springs, Arkansas
Justin Jones
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