Elmer T. Lee discontinued?

@WhiskyBee: My local (Dan Murphy, Australia) has a mountain of Elmer T. which is not selling at all and at Au.$95.00 for a bot at 45% Alc./Vol. I'm not surprised - Booker's is $89.00 @ 62.95%?

Cheers.

Not to worry on the Elmer T. Lee...

from Buffalo Trace (via Chuck Cowdery's blog)

Rumor #5: Elmer T. Lee is being discontinued. False. We have been making Elmer T. Lee Single Barrel for nearly three decades and have no plans to stop.

Rumor #6: Elmer took the recipe for his bourbon to his grave, so it will never be made again. False. Fortunately and thankfully, we have the recipe for Elmer T. Lee Bourbon and are continuing to make more. Additionally, we have a very full archive library of samples of his favorite picks to ensure consistency for the future.

Rumor #7: Elmer T. Lee is becoming part of the Antique Collection. False. We are very happy with our current lineup of the Antique Collection (George T. Stagg, Sazerac 18 Year, Eagle Rare 17 Year, William Larue Weller and Thomas H. Handy Sazerac) and have no plans to change this lineup or discontinue any of the offerings. Furthermore, our Antique Collection whiskies are only released once annually and we want to offer Elmer T. Lee Single Barrel more regularly throughout the year.

@InGreatSpirits - Your post is fantastic! - please accept my apology for inadvertently hitting the 'thumbs down'. I enjoy ETL and have a few tucked away. Thanks for sharing.

All the credit to Chuck Cowdery and the Buffalo Trace team for that - they felt the need to address the rumors head on given how rampant they had become.

@A'bunadhman

Aussie prices are ridiculous for American whiskey. :(

@InGreatSpirits, the Colonel certainly has the inside track on bourbon scuttlebutt. I am relieved to learn ETL will not become part of the Sazerac AC; I would never be able to afford opening three bottles at the same time...single barrel bourbon roulette:)

Very good news @InGreatSpirits!

Perhaps the reports of ETL Bourbon's demise are not greatly exaggerated.

@paddockjudge, Elmer T. Lee is still around, but remains scarce. A few months ago a friend of mine who does commercial catering and loves ETL offered me a bottle of his when I told him I couldn't find any to buy. I took him up on the bottle. It was his last one at the time. Soon thereafter he grew panicky when he found that he could not for the intervening months replenish his supply. I saw him a couple of days ago and a supplier had done him the favour of taking care of him by supplying him a 6 bottle case of Elmer T. Lee. Now the heat if off of me to give him back his last bottle, but I still don't think that there is much ETL to be found. Some of it was just recently released in the US, but that doesn't mean that the bottles make it to the liquor store shelves. At this point in time it is much easier for dealers and distributors to not be transparent with 'second tier' allocated whiskies like ETL than it is with the more famous allocated whiskeys. It would be extremely difficult at this point, for example, for most dealers to consider giving all 6 of their bottles of George T. Stagg to the same customer. There are too many people watching them and their bottles of Stagg now.

@A'bunadhman

Not anymore, it seems the Aussie stock has all but evaporated too in the past 3 months or so.