Description
Buffalo Trace Experimental Collection Oversized Barrel 500L is a Bourbon from Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky. This release was aged for eight years and nine months in a 500-liter oak barrel – 2.5 times the size of the standard 200-liter bourbon barrel – to test how a dramatically lower wood-to-liquid ratio shapes maturation over a roughly nine-year aging window.
The Experimental Collection is Buffalo Trace’s long-running program of one-off whiskeys exploring unique mash bills, woods, barrel toasts, and aging conditions, with more than 2,000 experimental barrels aging in the distillery’s warehouses. The Oversized Barrels release paired a 250-liter and a 500-liter barrel against each other on the same floor for the same length of time, with the 500L pulling noticeably more tannin and dry oak character than its smaller companion.
On the nose, it shows pronounced oak with dry tannic character. The palate brings tannic oak, dry wood spice, and assertive barrel char, and the finish carries a long, dry, oak-driven close.
Counter to the intuition that more wood means more flavor and less wood means less, the 500L actually pulled deeper, drier oak character than the 250L, suggesting the slower interaction at lower wood-to-liquid ratios still concentrates tannin over long maturation. It drinks well neat or over a single large cube.
- Size: 375ml
- Proof: 90 (45% ABV)
- Age: 8 Year 9 Months
- Origin: Frankfort, Kentucky
- Distillery: Buffalo Trace Distillery
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