Eagle Rare Single Barrel Bourbon - Review

Kentucky Home Grown

by Jeff Hoyt

Just as true Champagne must be made in France, Bourbons can only hail from the U.S. of A. And what better symbolizes America than an eagle and a buffalo? Eagle Rare Single Barrel Bourbon is produced by the Buffalo Trace Distillery, America’s oldest distilling site in Kentucky’s Franklin County.

As with French appellation wines, distilleries have strict rules to follow in order to label their whiskey products bourbon, such as corn making up more than half the grain used. Despite popular belief, Jack Daniels is not a bourbon because it undergoes a charcoal filtration before barrel aging.

To label a whiskey as Kentucky Straight Bourbon, the rules are the most stringent of any distilled spirit: it must have been distilled and aged in the state where Bourbon was born for a period of at least one year, and then continue to be aged for at least one more year. Eagle Rare meets all these requirements and more. This Kentucky Straight Bourbon owes its smoothness and great balance to ageing ten years in charred American white oak barrels. This golden-amber colored whiskey has a creamy texture, and vanilla, caramel and toffee flavors. It has a long finish, with a little raw alcohol note that melts away when ice or water is added. It is sweet, but packs a powerful punch.

The Buffalo Trace Distillery is a family-owned business more than a century old, best known for producing Blanton’s — the world’s first commercial single barrel bourbon — but also produces other whiskeys like Sazerac Rye, and vodka. During Prohibition, Buffalo Trace produced more than a million pints of whiskey for medicinal purposes. Eagle Rare Single Barrel is certainly good medicine for what ails you.

Price: $27