Buffalo Trace Availability -- National roll out?

[jeff]

Welcome to Straightbourbon.com Ed!

[bandit]

Thanks Ed,

Now that's what I call an inside tip.

I just found out that I will be travelling to Richmond, VA
next week, so I'll see if any of the nearby VA ABC's have
BT on hand.

I'll hold on to the RI store info.

This is a great list community. Cheers!

-Bandit

By the way, when I visited BT in Frankfort, they
(Freddie, I think?) said that BT would eventually
be rolled out nationally. Any inside update on this?
Do they have enough capacity/bourbon in the pipeline
to support a national brand roll out?

[voigtman]

Thanks! I posted a few years ago, but I seem to have fallen off the rolls due to not having posted for years, which I did because my ability to discern flavors is very poor. As a chemistry prof., when I want to know what vanilla smells like, like so many say they smell in bourbon, I just get a bottle of pure vanillin off the shelf and smell it ... and it smells just GREAT... and not like bourbon at all. So I like to read what others, with much better noses than I, get when they try various fine bourbons, but I can't contribute much in the way of tasting notes. Ed

[brendaj]

Ed,

So I like to read what others, with much better noses than I, get when they try various fine bourbons, but I can't contribute much in the way of tasting notes.

We're glad to have you! Although I've been drinking Bourbon most of my life, I am not good at the tasting note thing either. But I really enjoy everyone's opinion.
Welcome,
Bj

[kitzg]

By the way, when I visited BT in Frankfort, they
(Freddie, I think?) said that BT would eventually
be rolled out nationally. Any inside update on this?
Do they have enough capacity/bourbon in the pipeline
to support a national brand roll out?

Freddie is a great guy! No, they don't have the capacity right now to expand too far to fast. However, BT is a brand they do hope to roll out. I called them just now but did not get through but I talk to them frequently and will post their latest rollout plans as soon as I get information.

I realize one of you posted that you thought it was poor marketing by BT to only send few bottles of Stagg to your state. However, there are so many Stagg lovers in the core bourbon region and there is so little GT Stagg that they are simply trying to place it into stores where they know it will sell. At the time NY stores were trying to get $100 for Stagg last summer, I actually found a bottle sitting in another midwest store (not KY and the price was $36). It is really hard to determine distribution patterns. I know -- that was part of my job once.

-- Greg

[voigtman]

Thanks for the warm welcome! No intention of stepping on any toes, so maybe I should clarify my comment about the marketing of Stagg. Before the first release of Stagg, there were no pre-existing Stagg lovers, just savvy bourbon drinkers who love fine bourbon and who jump at the chance to buy it, try it, and buy some more. Those lucky folks who have tried Stagg in the past year were almost invariably happy to have done so, based on what I read here, and many are now serious Stagg lovers. That's great and more power to Buffalo Trace! But lots of us have had no chance, thanks to 1) the heavily restricted marketing region (which appears to be KY, IN and TN, with tiny state allotments everywhere else), and 2) the wildly different (boneheaded) state-by-state liquor laws that make it difficult or illegal (like here in MA) to buy liquor by mail order, phone order, internet order, etc. No Sam's orders. No Binny's orders. No Wine and Liquor Depot orders. You get the drift.

So it would help if distilleries could make it possible for more people to buy their products by shipping some product to other states, for sale in liquor stores. Radical concept, I know. This would make it unnecessary to have to set up trans-shipment sites with friends and relatives, find people to mule bottles back from the holy land (KY), etc. And as for marketing issues, all I know about marketing is these two things:

1. Marketing is MUCH more important than the actual product. This is very sad, but remember Pet Rocks? And then the Pet Rock Cemetery? Lots of examples of this exist.

2. Marketing a wildly popular product, to folks who are fervently seeking to buy it, has GOT to be a whole lot easier than selling rocks.

It would be sad if the odd bottle of Stagg sat on a shelf for a few weeks before getting snagged by some lucky person, but it is hard to see how that would be the distillery's problem because they already sold it on. Buffalo Trace can sell, quickly, every bottle of Stagg they produce. So there is no good reason to have such a micro-marketing region.

If this bothers anyone, no offense is intended. It's just that all I can do is HOPE that my latest attempt to get my local liquor store owner (who sells Saz 18, Eagle Rare 10 and ER 17) to get a bottle of Stagg is successful. One last thing: why doesn't BT at least send some 50 mL Stagg bottles to those of us in dark territory? That stretches the product further (and makes more profit: sell them for $5 per 50 mL bottle) and whets appetites among those who are Stagg lovers but don't know it yet because they haven't had the good fortune to try Stagg yet.



Ed

[CL]

No need to be great at tasting notes. I'm not and somehow these folks here still like me, even after 1000 posts.

Just letting us know what you like (e.g., in the What Are You Drinking Now thread) will let us know a little more about you and be able to make some suggestions on other bourbons you might like.

Welcome back.

[TheRoff]

Ok tasters, this novice needs some clarification. I am currently sipping from a bottle of 90 proof Buffalo Trace and really like it. (Goes down nice and smooth with a nice honey taste.) I purchased the 750 ML bottle, last week, from a Montgomery County, Maryland liquor store for $12.99. That price is certainly cheaper than the ones noted here. One Cube Only reports the same liquor stores have the “complete BT lineup.” I didn’t see any other bottles, and some clicking around the BT web site did not reveal any other bourbons than the seemingly standard 90 proof. What am I missing here? Are there other more aged bourbons available from BT? Or did I stumble into a heck of a good deal? If the latter is the case, the store was the one in Montgomery Village, and I am definitely going to pick up a couple of more bottles.

[TNbourbon]

First, yes, you stumbled onto a heckuva good deal with Buffalo Trace at $12.99. The label "Buffalo Trace" is only available in the 90-proof bottling. But the Buffalo Trace Distillery has the widest and deepest stable of long-lived (e.g., long barreled) bourbon in the business. In addition to all the Van Winkle brands (up to the 23yo Family Reserve, which I understand will be bottled again in December -- after 23 years in the barrel, there is only about 5 gallons of the original spirit left to bottle), Buffalo Trace (the distillery) also bottles Old Charter, Sazerac rye, Eagle Rare, (Ancient) Ancient Age, and Weller's -- all of which have bottlings 10 years or more old -- as well as Blanton's, Rock Hill Farms, Benchmark, Elmer T. Lee and Hancock's Reserve. All in all, quite a lineup.

[OneCubeOnly]

Buffalo Trace does indeed have a whole "lineup" of products. Check out:

http://www.greatbourbon.com/

With the exception of the McAfee's Benchmark, Weller 12, and the young and middle-aged Old Charters, you can find any or all of those in Montgomery County.