Elmer T. Lee Single Barrel is a 90 proof Kentucky straight bourbon from Buffalo Trace, each bottle drawn from one barrel. It honours the master distiller who created the single barrel category, and this bottle comes from the 2015 release, a couple of years before the brand became hard to find outside Kentucky.
About This Bourbon
This is a 2015 bottling of the standard 90 proof release. It is made from Buffalo Trace's Mash Bill #2, the higher-rye recipe the distillery also uses for Blanton's, and aged in new charred oak without an age statement. Because every bottle comes from a single cask, colour and spice vary a little from one barrel to the next.
Tasting Profile
- Nose: Clove and vanilla first, then honey, a little maple and a thread of old leather.
- Palate: Soft and balanced. Orchard fruit, honey and caramel, with light rye pepper and toasted oak arriving mid-palate.
- Finish: Warm and lasting, drying gently to leather, tobacco leaf and oak.
Serving & Food
Neat at room temperature in a Glencairn. At 45% it rarely needs water, though one large cube is welcome on a humid Hong Kong night. Pecan pie or a wedge of aged Gouda.
How to Enjoy
Buffalo Trace fans, and anyone wanting a mid-2010s Elmer T. Lee to open alongside a current bottle.
Product Details
Producer / Distillery: Buffalo Trace Distillery
Expression: Elmer T. Lee Single Barrel Bourbon
Category: Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey
Country: USA
Region: Frankfort, Kentucky
Mash Bill: Buffalo Trace Mash Bill #2 (higher rye)
Age: No age statement
ABV: 45%
Proof: 90 proof
Volume: 750mL
Bottling: 2015 release
About the Distillery
Buffalo Trace Distillery sits on the banks of the Kentucky River in Frankfort and has been owned by the Sazerac Company since 1992. The site was named a National Historic Landmark in 2013. Elmer Tandy Lee (1919 to 2013) started there in 1949 as a maintenance engineer, worked his way up to master distiller, and in 1984 launched Blanton's, the first bourbon marketed as a single barrel.
When he retired in 1985 the distillery gave him a bourbon of his own. Lee kept tasting and choosing barrels for it well into old age, and the bottling is still picked one cask at a time to the profile he set.