In honor of Col. Edmund Haynes Taylor Jr., Buffalo Trace Distillery will release in early June a one-time edition Warehouse C Bourbon (SRP: $69.99) in the E.H. Taylor Jr. line.
Warehouse C was built in 1885 and is the warehouse he was most proud of, the final piece in his “model distillery.”
Originally built before elevators were available, ramps were used inside Warehouse C to manually roll barrels to each floor. With six floors holding a total of 24,000 barrels and each barrel weighing approximately 500 pounds when filled, it must have been quite a task to get barrels into their ricks!
In more modern times, a barrel elevator was installed, and Warehouse C was re-ricked and re-floored to maximize capacity. Since barrel warehouses are built with the barrel ricks as stand alone units not attached to the walls for safety measures in case of a collapse, the re-design of Warehouse C when the elevator was put in allows for good air flow throughout the floors, making for an excellent all around aging warehouse for new and old barrels.
The barrels in the E.H. Taylor Jr. Warehouse C release were all aged for ten years in the center of Warehouse C, with half of them coming from the second floor and the other half from the fifth floor. The second floor is an outstanding aging floor for older barrels. The ricks are very tight, making it slow and difficult to put in new barrels. The floor is very dry, making it ideal for 10 to 15-year-old products. The fifth floor of Warehouse C is a well-rounded aging floor with windows all the way around, providing excellent air flow throughout the floor. There is ample sunlight through these windows which helps heat up the warehouse and the aging process.