E.H. Taylor Releases Incredibly Rare Bourbon For Charity

Today marks the 125th anniversary of the signing of the Bottled in Bond Act. So, Happy Bottled In Bond Day, everyone! E.H. Taylor Jr. is commemorating the occasion with the release of a special Single Barrel, hand selected by Grammy Award-winning country star Chris Stapleton. Sales of the limited edition 12-year-old bourbon will benefit charity. Here’s what it tastes like, and how you can get your hands on it.

But first, a brief backstory. E.H. Taylor is an award-winning line of whiskies produced at Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky. There’s a whole slew of circumstances that conspire to make this collection a favorite amongst the bourbon cognoscenti (geeks, if you prefer). For one, master distiller Harlen Wheatley doesn’t make all that much of it; “small batch” is not just marketing jargon here. For two, it’s a brand that embraces experimentation. Among the dozen labels released through the years are one-offs distilled with ancient grain, or barrels of liquid that survived tornadoes.

Regardless of the bottling, it’s universally delicious juice that carries many of the tonalities that seasoned drinkers admire. Which brings us to this final part of the preamble: it helped reinvigorate the bottled-in-bond subcategory. Championed by Colonel Edmund Haynes Taylor, Jr. himself, this is a style of American whiskey that must be distilled at a single distillery over a single season, aged for a minimum of 4 years and bottled at precisely 100-proof.

All of this was federally mandated with the passage of the aforementioned Bottled In Bond Act. It was a pretty big deal, because it introduced much-needed oversight and quality control into whiskey production at a time when some of the stuff on shelf was less than stellar. And it helped ignite demand for both bourbon and rye in the pre-Prohibition era.

Enough history. Let’s talk about the here and now. Today’s release of Colonel E.H. Taylor is a tawny-toned gem. Laid into the barrel on June 3rd, 2009, it has spent over a decade collecting all kinds of butterscotch, marzipan, leather—even a smidge of mint—from the cask. Assertive on the nose at 100-proof, it goes down impossibly easy in the sip, fading with brown sugar and rye spice along its rounded edges.

So, yeah, it’s great. But how do you get it? As of now, only through charitable auction. Now live, the winning bids will receive a bottle of the 125th Anniversary E.H. Taylor Single Barrel, signed by Chris Stapleton, along with two tickets to an upcoming concert on his 2022 All American Road Show tour.

Any product leftover after the auction will be used by Stapleton’s charitable fund, Outlaw State of Kind, to raise funds for various causes. Keep monitoring that site for any upcoming surprise drops. Buffalo Trace hasn’t disclosed exactly how much stock was produced, but you can typically expect less than 200 bottles out of a 12-year-old Kentucky barrel.

This is the second time in as many years that the singer has partnered up with Buffalo Trace on an E.H. Taylor release. Last year, those special editions fetched as much as $16,000 on the secondary market. With two weeks left on the current auction, the bids are only at $1550—for now. Do with that information what you will. In the meantime, the “everyday” E.H. Taylor Single Barrel sits on shelf at around $200 a bottle. Not even two years ago it was readily available for around $60. It won’t be getting any cheaper, as it continues to rack up accolades, and the Bottled-In-Bond category continues to grow in stature. For American whiskey fans, it seems, today’s “holiday” is one that’s actually celebrated year round.