For many Americans fall is all about changing leaves, shorter days, football and maybe even pumpkin spice. For fans of American whiskey, however, autumn means one thing: the imminent arrival of the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection. And today it is officially upon us. The 2025 BTAC is here and we can already tell you that it’s bigger than ever before; with the addition of a yellow-topped EH Taylor bottling, the total number of expressions is up to six. But is it better? Let’s find out. We’ve got your first taste below.
Before we get into the tasting notes for each, though, here’s a very brief refresher of what BTAC is, and how it blossomed into full-blown bourbon (and rye) sensation. The collection originally debuted back in 2000 as a way for Buffalo Trace to showcase a trio of its legacy labels in an older age-stated format.
The legendary distillery out of Frankfort, Kentucky was well ahead of the whiskey boom, debuting a 19-year-old William Larue Weller wheated bourbon, 18-year-old Sazerac Rye, and a 17-year-old Eagle Rare, at a time when top shelf American offerings weren’t much more than a curiosity. But the quality of these products were undeniable from the start, and demand soon followed. By 2002, Buffalo Trace had added the venerable George T. Stagg brand into the mix. It was joined four years later by a high-proof rye from Thomas H. Handy.
By the mid-2010s, as bourbon was in the midsts of a mainstream explosion in popularity, BTAC enjoyed positioning at the forefront of the trend. It held the precise recipe to make collector’s swoon: high-proof, full-flavored liquids of vaunted provenance, in scant supply. This is the same producer responsible for Pappy Van Winkle, after all, and that no-so-closely-guarded secret had, by then, been revealed to all.
So even though these bottles were meant to retail well under the $100 mark, they were already seeing 10x fold mark-ups on the secondary. Nowadays, they’re priced at $150 each, and though the bourbon boom has leveled-off slightly, you can still expect to see them listed at four figure prices from many online retailers. Your best bet for finding them at cost is by visiting Legacy De Forge, a new global platform for premium bottle sales. A limited supply will be allocated for direct purchase on the site starting today.
Here’s what you can expect to uncork from each:
