Buffalo Trace

I love your review and how you compare Buffalo Trace to O Brother, Where Art Thou the movie. Very clever.

@Rantavahti, I am glad that you enjoyed your Buffalo Trace bourbon. Many do. I like it ok, but I like all of the 20 other bourbons I have had from the same distillery more.

If you like standard BT, then my advice to you is "Get thee to a Stagg-ery!". George T. Stagg is like the Hydrogen Bomb Version of standard Buffalo Trace Bourbon...same mashbill, 15+ years of aging, and typically around 70+% ABV. This is The Bomb for the Buffalo Trace Mashbill, like Slim Pickens at the close of Dr. Strangelove.

If you get bitter, then the oak is leaving something to be desired. Rye is never bitter. It is sharp, it is spicy, but it is not bitter.

Cheers, Friend!

Thanks for your input @maltygirl and @Victor.

@Victor George T. Stagg definitely is in my wanted list since my eye opening experience with BT. I've kinda had the elitist attitude towards bourbons. Thinking that single malts are the only great ones...

Interesting to hear about the bitterness. Actually, now that I think of it, there was also a very sharp and tangy feel in the finish that I didn't find appealing. Almost like tasting a cleanser if I may exaggerate bit (like I would know how cleanser tastes like...). Could that be the rye?

Hi @Rantavahti. The best thing to do to get the taste of rye is to sample a few ryes, especially the best ones. When I visited Thailand many years ago I saw sapphires for sale on every block, at prices from a couple of bucks to many thousands and wondered what I might buy among them. Then I saw some $ 25,000 stones and immediately knew what a gem-quality sapphire should look like.

If you want to encounter Plato's Form of Rye Whiskey, try some Thomas H. Handy Sazerac Rye, or the Canadian produced Masterson's Straight Rye Whiskey 10 yo.

I had to overcome a somewhat different cultural bias: Scottish malt seemed at first to me to be a product which had been in recent centuries bastardised by needing heavy peat and wine-aging because it starts from such relatively mediocre flavouring agents as the grain barley and worn-out re-used wood. Of course with experience I came to see and appreciate that there are many beautiful malt whiskies, and that Scottish malt is not just washed out and lifeless. The flavour profiles remain quite different between most American non-barley whiskies and world malt whiskies, however. Rye is never used in Scotch, and new wood rarely, because those are dominating flavours and would overwhelm the flavours of malted barley. But those two flavours are what American whiskey is all about. Barley-malt whisky and US Bourbons and Ryes are two different categories of taste experiences, like the difference between eating red meat and eating fish. If someone were to ask me, "Which tastes BETTER, meat or fish?" my truthful answer is that I like them both, very much, in their own ways, and at different times when in different moods.

It is always good to have substantial experience before developing strong opinions.

Thanks for the recommendations. That's so true what you say about comparing bourbon and Scottish malt. Every product has it's key players and the bad ones.

Just recently had a chance to try quality rum (Ron Matusalem 15 year old Gran Reserva rum) and once again, got an great example of how different it can be compared to the average ones.