Buffalo Trace Now Has an Eagle Rare You Just Might be Able to Buy

One of the most popular whiskeys made by Buffalo Trace Distillery is Eagle Rare, and its calling card has always been its high age statements. The flagship expression today is a wildly popular 10 year old bourbon, mirroring the original Eagle Rare from the Seagram days, which was bottled at 10 years old and 101 proof. The rest of the lineup only goes higher from there, including unicorns like Eagle Rare 17 (part of the Buffalo Trace antique collection), the 20 year old Double Eagle Double Rare, and Eagle Rare 25.

Those older bottlings have largely been out of reach for most whiskey lovers, with the oldest carrying astronomical price tags and the others selling out quickly at retailers. But Buffalo Trace has just announced a new expression that should be a bit easier for people to find: a 12 year old bourbon that will now be a core expression.

Aging Up

Except for the two-year age difference, the newcomer is nearly identical to Eagle Rare 10 year old. Both whiskeys are distilled from Buffalo Trace’s mashbill 1 (the same recipe used to make Buffalo Trace, E.H. Taylor, Stagg, and Old Charter). The exact details of the mashbill are a closely guarded secret, but it’s widely thought to be a corn-heavy recipe with 10% or less rye. The new whiskey was bottled at 47.5% ABV, a slight increase from the 45% proof point of the 10 year old.

Eagle Rare 12 year old will be available at bars, restaurants, and retailers around the country starting this month, with availability in select overseas markets by autumn. It has a suggested retail price of $50, although considering Buffalo Trace’s popularity, you’ll likely have to shell out more than that.

Expansion Pays Off

According to the distillery, a big part of this release is credited to a critical production expansion that Buffalo Trace has been undertaking for nearly a decade. The project, which cost an approximate $1.2 billion, kicked off in 2016 and has seen new equipment and facilities added on a yearly basis. Part of the expansion focused on revamping the visitor center, but the distillery also received a sizable capacity boost, including 14 new rickhouses, 12 fermenters, and a new stillhouse with a 40-foot still, with the goal to produce an additional 60,000 gallons per day.

Buffalo Trace’s expansion was just one of many that started around a decade ago, when the whole industry was blindsided by a rising demand for bourbon, which many producers just didn’t have enough liquid to satisfy. Some producers like Beam were hit especially hard, with the distillery completely running out of juice for its Knob Creek label. Faced with a shortage, many distillers began drastically ramping up their production, expanding their distilleries while laying down more barrels than before.

With sales softening in today’s landscape, many distillers are now faced with a buildup of aged whiskey that’s approximately 7–12 years old. The distillers, of course, need to find a way to move these stocks, so they’ve largely stuck to one of two strategies. Some like Woodford Reserve and Old Forester have decided to widen availability for their most sought-after bottles, taking their highly limited Double Double Oaked and President’s Choice expressions nationwide for the first time.

Other producers like Buffalo Trace are instead using those stocks to add new age-stated expressions to their core range as permanent offerings. As we exclusively reported last week, Heaven Hill’s new 7 year old Old Fitzgerald bourbon will be available year-round alongside the typical limited-edition annual batches. Beam has also notably taken this route, replacing its original non-age-stated Jim Beam Black with a new 7 year old version while cranking up the age statements for its Knob Creek releases.