Buffalo Trace 1999 Millennium Barrel

A historic distillery, Buffalo Trace was built in 1812 Harrison Blanton. It was then purchased by the legendary Edmund Haynes Taylor Jr in 1870, who named it OFC (Old Fashioned Copper) and invested heavily in its modernisation. So much so in fact that he declared himself bankrupt after just seven years, and George T. Stagg stepped in to rescue it, becoming its owner in 1878. He ran the distillery until his retirement in the 1890s, and it was renamed in his honour in 1904. Having survived Prohibition, it was bought up by the Schenley company in 1933, who ran it as part of their extensive portfolio for the next fifty years,eventually selling it to Age International. The latter's new Japanese ownership in 1992 had no interest in it (only in its brands), and immediately sold it to the Sazerac company, who renamed it Buffalo Trace in 1999.

Sazerac caused quite a stir when revealing Buffalo Trace as the distillery's new title, borrowed from a DBA ("doing business as") name that they had used to bottle several Age International brands in the early 1990s. This was unusual as it was more common for a distillery to take its name from a product it sold, or from its actual parent company. After much confusion, they enlisted the help of former master distiller, Elmer T. Lee, who found the barrels ageing in their warehouse that would become the first batch of Buffalo Trace straight bourbon. It proved so popular that he was subsequently invited to assist them with replicating the flavour for their core range product.

This special single barrel release is from a cask filled on 31st December 1999. It was aged in the distillery's one-barrel warehouse, the US' smallest bonded warehouse, and bottled 11 years later. One of just 174 bottles.