Buffalo Trace Distillery

Buffalo Trace Kentucky Straight Bourbon is the distillery's flagship. It is named for the ancient buffalo paths that led early pioneers west, one of which ran through the distillery site in Frankfort. The bourbon launched in 1999, the year Sazerac renamed the distillery Buffalo Trace. It is aged in new charred oak barrels in century-old warehouses and bottled at 90 proof from the distillery's Mash Bill #1. Expect vanilla, mint and molasses on the nose, then brown sugar, toffee, dark fruit and anise.

Eagle Rare was introduced by Seagram in 1975. It was made by master distiller Charles L. "Chuck" Beam and first bottled at 101 proof. Sazerac bought the brand in 1989, and it has been made at Buffalo Trace ever since. Today the core bottle is aged at least ten years and bottled at 90 proof. Older bottlings include a 12 Year, the 17 Year from the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection, and Double Eagle Very Rare, a 20-year-old bourbon in a crystal decanter. Look for toffee, orange peel, honey and leather, then candied almonds and cocoa.

William Larue Weller, born in 1825, went into the whiskey trade in 1849 with W.L. Weller & Brothers, later W.L. Weller & Sons. Pappy Van Winkle sold whiskey for the firm from 1893, and the firm merged with the A. Ph. Stitzel Distillery to open Stitzel-Weller in 1935, known for bourbon made with wheat in place of rye. Buffalo Trace took over the Weller label in 1999 and keeps the wheated recipe, from 90-proof Special Reserve to William Larue Weller, released each fall in the Antique Collection.

Colonel Edmund Haynes Taylor, Jr. bought the distillery that is now Buffalo Trace in 1870 and named it O.F.C. He built Warehouse C in 1885 and is widely credited, with John G. Carlisle, with pushing through the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897. Buffalo Trace relaunched the Taylor name as Colonel E.H. Taylor, Jr. in February 2011. The Small Batch and Single Barrel are bottled in bond at 100 proof. The line also includes a Straight Rye made only from rye and malted barley, a Barrel Proof, and limited releases such as Four Grain and Amaranth.

Sazerac Rye takes its name from New Orleans, where rye whiskey shipped down the Mississippi fueled the city's bars. At the Sazerac Coffee House on Royal Street, rye toddies with Peychaud's Bitters became the Sazerac cocktail. Thomas H. Handy, owner of the Sazerac House from 1869, made American rye the drink's base when cognac ran short. Today the rye is made at Buffalo Trace in Frankfort: the core bottling is 90 proof, and Sazerac 18 and Thomas H. Handy (uncut, unfiltered) come out each fall in the Antique Collection.

Old Charter Oak is an exploration of oak itself: each bottle in the collection is aged in barrels made from a different wood, to show how oak from distant forests changes a bourbon. The Old Charter story began in 1874, when Adam and Ben Chapeze named their whiskey after the Charter Oak, a 600-year-old tree in Hartford, Connecticut that became a symbol of American freedom and independence. The collection includes Finest Oak, French Oak, Chinkapin Oak, Canadian Oak and Mongolian Oak.

Traveller is a collaboration between Buffalo Trace Distillery and Chris Stapleton, the 12-time Grammy-winning singer and songwriter from Lexington, Kentucky. Stapleton and Master Distiller Harlen Wheatley tested more than 50 custom blends before choosing Blend No. 40, an American whiskey made to be, in their words, easy to drink and hard not to love. It's the first official whiskey of Major League Baseball, and Blend No. 40 also comes in a full-proof bottling.

Benchmark is named for the surveyor's marks left by the McAfee brothers, who set out from Virginia in 1773 and surveyed the land at the great buffalo crossing where Buffalo Trace stands today. Seagram made the brand first; Sazerac bought it in 1989 and makes it at Buffalo Trace, and the Old No. 8 label reads "McAfee's Benchmark". The "8" is not an age. Old No. 8 is an 80-proof everyday bourbon from Mash Bill #1, and the range adds Top Floor (86), Small Batch (90), Single Barrel (95), Bonded (100) and Full Proof (125).

Wheatley Vodka is made at Buffalo Trace Distillery and named for Harlen Wheatley, the distillery's master distiller since 2005. It uses red winter wheat and limestone-filtered water, the same ingredients behind the distillery's bourbons, and is distilled ten times and triple filtered, then bottled at 82 proof. Clix is Harlen Wheatley's own vodka: the name is 159 in Roman numerals, for the 159 separate distillations it took to make it.

A few more bottles made at Buffalo Trace: Hancock's President's Reserve and Rock Hill Farms, both single-barrel bourbons; Mr. Sam, a barrel-proof tribute bottle; and Handy & Schiller's bottled cocktails, a Mint Julep, a Paper Plane, a Manhattan and an Old Fashioned, ready to pour over ice. Some of these come and go, so grab them while they're here.