Quick question: what were you doing back in 1998? Maybe you were in high school, listening to Now That's What I Call Music! Volume 1 on your sweet new Sony Discman. Maybe you were working at a menial job making $12 an hour and dreaming of bigger things, or taking care of your toddling firstborn. Maybe you were a toddler. Hell, maybe you weren't even born yet.
I pose this query — I was in middle school back then, for what it's worth — because whatever you were doing, you had no idea that, down in Frankfort, Kentucky, a supply of booze was being socked away into barrels with a fate of becoming Eagle Rare 25 bourbon whiskey.
To be fair, even the Buffalo Trace Distillery folks didn't know that would be the end result of that liquid when they socked it away during the Clinton administration. Its destiny was only decided in recent years, after the bourbon spent 15 years in its barrels and was extracted in order to be tasted and judged to see which of the company's many brands it would be used for.
Eagle Rare 25 is the first release from Buffalo Trace Distillery's Warehouse P, one of the company's two experimental warehouses. Buffalo Trace has a 240-year history, master distiller Harlen Wheatley said at the reveal event, "but we also embrace change." Hence, Warehouse P — where the company can take complete control of the climate inside to see just how far the distillery can push the limit of aging bourbon, seeking to eliminate the astringency and other less-desirable characteristics that often can define an old expression of the spirit.
"The possibilities are endless," Wheatley said. "There's no reason why we can't make a 50-year-old bourbon."
Eagle Rare 25, then, is a confident step in that direction. Buffalo Trace says it has notes of cherry and oak on the nose, vanilla and fruit on the palate and notes of pepper and rickhouse floor on the finish, among others. To me, the nose came across as surprisingly subtle, especially compared to the 10-, 17- and 20-year expressions we sampled before the 25, while the flavors reminded me of Christmas — a mix of wood, winter spices and fruit-laden desserts. ( I can't speak to whether the woody flavors I detected were the aforementioned rickhouse floor notes, having never licked the floors at Buffalo Trace.) Compared with the 20-year-old Double Eagle Very Rare, it's a bit more subtle and less tannic, but still with a bit of that sharp bitterness that gives aged bourbon its edge versus scotches of similar lifespan.
Each bottle comes in a handmade wooden display box that also serves as a travel case, holding the bottle securely in place when on the go. A certificate of authenticity is hidden inside the case's door, matched to the bottle's serial number to help prevent fraud. (The bottle also includes other anti-fraud measures that Buffalo Trace is less forthcoming about, but suffice it to say, there's a way to know if a bottle has been opened and resealed.)
If you want to take this bird home, be prepared to work to find it and pay up, however. Just 200 bottles of Eagle Rare 25 will be released for sale to retail outlets, bars and restaurants, each at a suggested retail price of $10,000.
