Col. E.H. Taylor Single Barrel Bourbon
Opened: February 13, 2012
100 proof (50% ABV)
Price: $74.99
Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey
Bottled in Bond – No Age Statement
Producer-distiller: Buffalo Trace
Tasting Date: April 10, 2012
Color in glencairn glass: Round amber-orange.
Nose: Varnish, orange peel, berry flower. Vanilla perfume, orange hard candy, a sprinkling of oak.
Taste: Thin, even watery on the entry. The palate has the consistency of a melted hard candy with added water. Mild berry flowers and dusty saddle leather linger around the edges but dissipate quickly towards a center of only very slight sweet orange. There is a bit of a creamed corniness, but it’s a weak cry for help at the bottom of a well.
The finish carries just enough of a spicy, alcoholy sting to wake you up and remind you that you’re drinking bourbon, but everything else about this whiskey is limply mild, leaving very little impact.
Value: $37/$75
There is nothing offensive here, save for the price. It is a single barrel expression (though the barrel is not identified), so you can expect differences between bottles out in the wild, but I haven’t seen much positive mention of this release out in the whiskeysphere. It is the second release of Buffalo Trace’s new Colonel E.H. Taylor line, and it falls short of the Sour Mash, which was the first release.
I’d like to stumble upon another bottle of the Sour Mash and write about it, because I found the one bottle I had to be similarly mild, but more confident, sustaining and entirely unique. I also plan on writing about the third, and current release, the Tornado Surviving barrels. My local shelves still contain a fair amount of the Single Barrel iteration, but the more recently released Tornado Surviving bottles disappeared rather quickly.
Whiskey Wonka 