1/7/14: Buffalo Trace Antique Collection is released in Utah over the weekend
12/18/13: New York and Connecticut release the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection
12/3/13: Buffalo Trace Antique Collection has come and gone in Maine
11/21/13: New Jersey BTAC
11/20/13: Oregon & Massachusetts has Buffalo Trace Antique Collection
Buffalo Trace uses two primary mash bills. While they don’t disclose the exact recipe Bourbonr’s much wiser than I have made educated guesses at the mash bill percentages. Mash bill # 1 is probably 10% or less and mash bill #2 is somewhere between 10%-12%. Mash bill number two with 10-12% rye is a more common rye content for bourbons.
I also saw Thomas Handy in FL but not the rest of the release
Eagle Rare 17 Year Old
The previous edition of this bourbon was honored with a Gold Medal at the 2012 International Wine and Spirits Competition. The 2013 edition was distilled in the Spring of 1993 and has been aging on the 2nd, 3rd and 6th floors of Warehouses I and K. The barrels selected for this batch were actually aged for 19 years, and the taste has been described as dry, with hints of oak, leather, and tobacco.
J.W. Dant is the large plastic bottle you’ve ignored for years. It sits on the bottom shelf of liquor stores across the country. At $29 for a 1.75L it has to be trash, right? This is one of my favorite bottles to include in a blind tasting. Everyone is shocked when they taste and find out its a bottom shelf(er).
First, everyone is looking for Pappy these days. In 2013, when I started the map, Pappy was hard to find. But, with enough legwork, you could find a bottle. That has changed over the years. Everyone wants Pappy now. If there were dozens of people showing up to store releases in 2013, there are now thousands. That’s a good thing for bourbon. Secondly, stores have changed how they handle the release of Pappy Van Winkle. Most stores either hold raffles or sell bottles through their loyalty programs. This is a good solution for a problem with no great answers. However, spending thousands of dollars at a store isn’t bourbon hunting. The third issue I see is the retail price of Pappy Van Winkle. According to Wine-Searcher, the average price is up from $928 in November 2014 for a Pappy Van Winkle 15-Year to $1,651 in October of 2019. The statistic that’s missing, and more glaring, is the number of retailers that sell at (or close) to retail. My rough estimate is around 3%-4%. Finding a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle is rare. Finding a bottle at a reasonable markup doesn’t happen anymore.
Finally, the Van Winkles and parent company Sazerac have taken a hard stand against the bourbon secondary. This felt like an attack on bourbon communities that may also have buy/sell/trade. I.e. your local bourbon Facebook group. Don’t get me wrong. The secondary market is at best a grey area and at worst illegal. But, it served a specific purpose. Didn’t get a bottle of Van Winkle Rye but you did get a 20-year? You could trade. Sazerac’s main (stated) concern has been consumer protection from fakes or counterfeits. There’s no mention of adding anti-counterfeiting measures to the bottle. An open market has done a much better job at policing fakes. It was the secondary that caught multiple fake bottles and shut down counterfeiters. Not Buffalo Trace. There was also no mention of retailers that sell for prices 2x-3x the current market. Some distributors force retailers to buy thousands of dollars in products they don’t want. Or, empty bottle sales. My point, there are a lot of issues. Going after some of your most loyal and vocal fans doesn’t seem like the right path to take.
That was a little more long-winded than I like to be but I hope you understand the decision. There is one postscript point I’d like to make. Current Pappy and LE bourbon prices make people think they need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to taste great bourbon. I know that the Van Winkles and Buffalo Trace would agree with me saying: “That couldn’t be farther from the truth!” Buffalo Trace makes some of the best bourbon on the market today. Most Buffalo Trace brands remain hard to find. But, a regular bottle of Buffalo Trace still beats out most $100 bottles on the market. Here is my list of what I think people should be drinking. I’m not calling these Pappy replacements. These are just great, affordable bourbons.
Proof: 116.9
Age: 15-Years 3-Months
Review: Initially, there are notes of honey, maple, and other sweet notes. The fruit notes are more like a melon or honeydew. I get a little bit of cinnamon and peach tea on the finish.
Conclusion: I enjoyed the fact that this release is a little lower proof. I believe it allowed some other flavors to shine. Overall, it’s not cracking my top 4 of GTS release. It’s a good release but nothing to go crazy over.
Proof: 128 proof
Age: 12-Years 6-Months
Review: The nose is drier than most WLW releases. There are notes of spearmint and cocoa powder. I pick up some faint notes of black pepper and bruleed cherries. The taste is more of the same. It stays consistently dry throughout. The palate expands to golden raisins and cedar. The finish is a little short. It’s heavy with espresso bitterness, pepper, and oak. After a few drops of water, the fruit notes begin to shine
Conclusion: This was not my favorite this year. It was a little too dry for my preference. There were some of the traditional WLW notes but none of the balanced sweetness and dark fruits I love.
1 – Eagle Rare 17
2 – George T Stagg
3 – Thomas H Handy
4 – William Larue Weller
5 – Sazerac 18
I have a lot of other thoughts on this. But, I’m saving them for a later post. For now, I will agree to disagree with Buffalo Trace’s tactics to combat fakes and counterfeits. Which is the goal of every Bourbon enthusiast out there.
This is the favorite time of the year for bourbon fans, the annual release of the Van Winkle Bourbons. Like previous years, yields from the barrels are low due to evaporation during the long aging cycle.
Known for their smoother and sweeter flavor due to the wheat recipe versus the traditional rye recipe found in most bourbons, Van Winkle bourbons are aged years longer than most others and have garnered an impeccable reputation among connoisseurs. Although bourbon has become increasingly popular worldwide in recent years, very little Van Winkle is sold overseas, so that these coveted bottles are available in the United States.
The nose is initially floral and fruity. There are notes of baking spice and caramel apples. The taste is filled with dried cherries and apricots. There are some brighter notes but it all transitions into a musty dry cedar note. It’s not as apparent at first. But, it’s slightly offputting when going back to the whiskey.
Conclusion: This whiskey was promising on the nose. Unfortunately, there were some notes that I didn’t enjoy in the palate and finish. Compared to the 2015 release, it doesn’t compare.
With this whiskey, you dive straight into dry, aged notes. There is a lot of tobacco, leather and dried orange peel. I still get a lot of brown sugar and toasted almonds. The palate is full and bursting with different flavor notes. I get a Bruled banana and toasted walnuts. The finish eases into dried out and bright cherry.
Conclusion: This was a great surprise. I was hoping for this flavor profile as soon as I heard they were moving to 101 proof in 2018. This is a win.
Initially, the whiskey starts with a sweet and spice balance similar to hot tamales candy. There are some different notes. I get sweet-tarts with a little bit of mint. I still pick up black pepper, honey, and apple cider. The taste spicy but the heat slowly dissipates to a medium to shorter finish.
Conclusion: This is a solid release. It wasn’t spectacular but I would definitely buy it given the opportunity. It would hold its own amongst any other barrel proof rye currently on the market.
Overall, I felt like this was a strong showing. The Sazerac fell short. Eagle Rare was a home run and the Handy was a great pour.
Join me tonight as I review the George T Stagg and William Larue Weller.
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Barrel charring is probably one of the most exciting and spectacular things you will come across, as you learn more about American Whiskey. It is unclear how it all started – and there are a lot of interesting theories out there. The most famous one is probably about the Baptist Minister Elijah Craig and the lightning in his barn that accidentally charred his barrels, during the ensuing fire. The story is very likely not true – but it would have been SO cool if it had. The theory that I believe in the most, is that barrel charring simply started because they were trying to remove the smell, of what had previously been in the barrels. You know .. salted fish, oil, and other goodies …. Bourbonr Note: Check out Fred Minnick’s Bourbon Curious for more on this subject.
But … this is a nerdy post – and not a history post – so if you are interested in the historical aspect, you can knock yourself out on Google, I guess – or buy one of the great books about American Whiskey.
What happens inside the wood is basically insane – and you can read about the details below.
By law, many of the American Whiskey types must be aged in new charred oak barrels (technically “containers”, but everybody uses barrels). You char the barrels on the inside using flames, obviously, and some use a gas burner, and some use a “natural” furnace, based on left-over wood from the manufacturing process.
Even though it is not actually an official scale, most manufacturers work with so-called “char levels”, and the consensus is, that the wood is burned as follows:
Level #4 is sometimes referred to as “alligator” char, as the wood looks like the back of an alligator after those 55 seconds – as you may be able to spot from in the picture above. In principle, the scale goes beyond level #4, and there was a famous example of this a few years back when Buffalo Trace released one of their experimental bottles with a level #7 char. According to them, they had charred those barrels for a whopping 3-3½ minutes:
Is longer charring better, then? That very much depends on the flavor/taste profile you are seeking out. Think of charring as a kind of seasoning. Is more seasoning in your food better? That answer will also vary from person to person. Most companies, however, tend to prefer the higher char levels – and as you will read later, there are good reasons for that.
So far, so good. Let’s dig one step further.
There are basically four main reasons why whiskey benefits from barrel charring:
Edit: Yes, I know Blanton’s and Buffalo Trace are two different mash bills. I’ve seen Eagle Rare picks from mash bill #2 and I’m not convinced the division is as clean-cut as we think. Even if it is, we’re talking about a 3-5% difference is rye. The point of the article is, drink what you like. But, know what you’re drinking.