Eagle Rare Bourbon 10 Year Old

Eagle Rare Bourbon 10 Year Old warming up the snow

I don’t know how I have done this many reviews and I’m just now getting to Eagle Rare Bourbon.  The Eagle Rare 10 year, like the Stagg Jr. I recently reviewed, is the younger sibling of a Buffalo Trace Antique Collection release (Eagle Rare 17), but unlike the Stagg, this one is readily available year round….or rather, it used to be.   We’ll get into that a bit later.  This used to be labeled as a single barrel but according to some internet sleuthing, Buffalo Trace changed its bottling line and they can’t guarantee that it will be single barrel anymore.

ABV: 45%

How it smells….maple syrup, vanilla, confectioners sugar

How it tastes….starts honey sweet followed by vanilla and ending in oak.  The finish is sweet and cinnamony like Hot Tamales candy.  

Price..$30-$40

Rating….🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃

Final thoughts….Even at the inflated price, this is a 5x 🥃 rating.  It’s a great bourbon and still at a great value.  The Eagle Rare 10 isn’t flashy though.  It’s not crazy complex by any means, it just hits all the standard bourbon tasting notes.  I feel like when I do some of these bourbons I’m just recycling the same tasting notes….Vanilla? Check.  Oak?  Check.  Sweet?  Check.  Baking Spice?  Check…and it becomes more of an exercise of which of these flavors are dominant and in what order you taste them.  And that’s all right.  The Eagle Rare isn’t bold or flashy and I don’t think it has a dominant flavor, but they’re all noticeable and they all play equal roles throughout the sip, which I suppose the balance in itself is a bit remarkable in its own right.  

When I first got heavily into whiskey, the Buffalo Trace Bourbon was my go-to shelf bottle.  A nice little $25 pick at the time.  When that bottle started to be on allocation, I moved over to the Eagle Rare 10 as it was (and may still be) the best bang-for-your-buck bourbon.  A 10 year old smooth sipper for $30?  Yes please.  

But alas, now the Eagle Rare 10 is on allocation and the prices are going up.  Around me, I started to see prices tick up about a year or so ago….a couple bucks at a time.  Now it can be up to $40 (33% increase!)...others are keeping it around $36.  When I see one, I snag it because I know how this is going to go (Blanton’s anyone?) so I might as well create a stockpile before it gets silly.