E H Taylor E. H. Taylor Small Batch

About the E H Taylor E. H. Taylor Small Batch

Kentucky bourbon has few names older than this one. E H Taylor E. H. Taylor Small Batch is a straight bourbon bottled at 100 proof. The spirit comes from the old O.F.C. Distillery, the Kentucky plant now known as Buffalo Trace. It is built on Mash Bill #1, the distillery's own bourbon recipe. Batches stay deliberately small. At 50% ABV the whisky holds its shape, sweet and firm rather than sharp. The name honours Colonel Edmund Haynes Taylor Jr., the man who made the place. Taylor bought the O.F.C. Distillery after the Civil War and rebuilt it to his own standard. In came copper fermenters, column stills and climate controlled ageing. Those methods are still in use across the industry today. He also pushed the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897 through Congress. That law gave drinkers a legal guarantee of what sat in the bottle. This bourbon matures in the century old warehouses he built himself. Caramel corn sweetness leads, backed by butterscotch and a thread of liquorice. Underneath sits brown sugar and toffee, with vanilla filling out the middle. Fresh fruit shows up next, soft and a little like banana. Then the spice arrives: cinnamon, black pepper, a dry curl of tobacco. Honey rounds the edges before the finish settles into something quiet and warm. The mouthfeel stays soft even at 100 proof. The range around it runs to straight rye, barrel proof and the Warehouse C bottling. E H Taylor E. H. Taylor Small Batch is the steady one, the entry point to the collection. Barrels are chosen and married in small lots, so the profile stays consistent bottle to bottle. Higher proof siblings hit harder but give up some of this balance. If you want Taylor's ideas in their plainest form, start here.