Blanton’s Gold Edition

If you’re a fan of Buffalo Trace mashbill #2 there’s a great chance you’ve sipped your share of Blanton’s Single Barrel product. Full disclosure, we’re big Buffalo Trace fans, but there’s something we can’t quite come to terms with, and that’s the fact that as vast as the United States’ bourbon market is…we just can’t buy the other offerings from Blanton’s!

UPDATE:

Blanton’s Gold will be coming to the United States (finally!) for the summer of 2020 and with an SRP of $120. Fred Minnick just dropped a killer write-up with some great Blanton’s history, and coverage of the release from Sazerac.

If you are able to get your hands on a bottle of one of these offerings (Gold Edition, Straight From the Barrel, Special Reserve, Etc.) you should count yourself lucky–but also share your notes with us in the comments below.

Nose – Fruit and oak mix together with a bit of ethanol up front. With a few minutes to rest this all opens up into a plethora of aromas such as buttery apples and vanilla over more distinct oak and a light spicy bit of tobacco.

Taste – Rich and full-bodied. Vanilla and honey poured over bright fruit. The fruit that’s standing out is green apple and there’s some nice buttery caramel in there, but it’s outshone by a hint of nice oak that accentuates the vanilla flavor. It’s just right.

Finish – On the longer side. The added proof points over the standard Blanton’s Single Barrel does this juice plenty of justice, and lets that finish hang right on. The oak and mild spice gives way to sweet fruit and there’s still the brief cotton candy note that I grab from some Blanton’s barrels.

The Bourbon Finder Grade: A-

Thoughts – Well this is a fun pour. One hell of a sipper, and something that leaves us constantly going back to swirl, inspect, and sip again. Very impressive what a few proof points can do to transform an already well-liked product into a more premium one. If you have the chance to get a bottle of Blanton’s Gold Edition, we fully recommend it!

Our grading system: As mentioned in our About Us page, we’re excited to share bourbon with our friends, family, and readers. There are enough critics, cynics, and curmudgeons in the whiskey world as it is. Our goal is to foster the bourbon community in a positive way by bringing fun–and entertaining content whenever possible– as such, we decided that applying precise scores to whiskey was simply too serious for us (and didn’t accurately showcase how there is variability in taste from day to day). We use a simple grade school system to apply a grade to the whiskeys we review because we feel it is indicative of the whiskey’s grade for us on that particular day. A grade of a “B” today may very well be a “B+” or even a “B-” on another day, so rather than focusing on a precise score, we are just sharing our overall grade of that pour for that one tasting. Pour a bit and enjoy, friends, these are the good old days of whiskey!