Woodford Reserve and Buffalo Trace are two of the bottles people most often pick up when they want to take a slight step up from entry-level whiskeys like Jim Beam White Label. Woodford Reserve is made by Brown-Forman at its distillery in Versailles, Kentucky, and Buffalo Trace is the namesake bourbon of the Sazerac-owned distillery in Frankfort.
In the US, you will pay about $40 for Woodford and $30 for Buffalo Trace, though store prices vary a lot from state to state. In the UK, Woodford typically costs between £28 and £38, and Buffalo Trace is £30.
So, with such a narrow price difference and large presence on the shelf, which of these two bourbons should you buy? Let’s take a look at how the bourbons are made, how they taste, what critics and competition judges have said about them, how easy each one is to find, and which one works better neat or in a cocktail.
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READ THE STORYHow They’re Made
Woodford Reserve is made from 72% corn, 18% rye, and 10% malted barley. The whiskey is triple distilled in copper pot stills at the distillery in Versailles, Kentucky, and then blended with column-still whiskey made at Brown-Forman’s distillery in Shively, Kentucky. Brown-Forman doesn’t disclose the ratio of pot-still to column-still whiskey in the final bottle. In the US, Woodford is bottled at 90.4 proof (45.2% ABV), and the UK version is 43.2% ABV.
Buffalo Trace is made from the distillery’s Mash Bill #1, and Buffalo Trace has never published its exact grain percentages. The recipe is generally thought to contain 10% rye or less. Buffalo Trace is bottled at 90 proof (45% ABV) in the US, while the standard UK bottle is 40% ABV, so UK drinkers are buying a slightly lower-strength bourbon than the one most American critics review.
Woodford Reserve & Buffalo Trace Tasting Notes & Critical Consensus
Woodford Reserve’s 18% rye is well above the estimated 10% or less in Buffalo Trace, and the extra spice is easy to pick out. In his review of Woodford Reserve, Phil Dwyer found vanilla, caramel, toffee, coconut, mango, rye spice, fudge, and milk chocolate on the nose. He described the palate as “spicy, green and a little driven by things like nutmeg and cinnamon,” with sweet cherry, milk chocolate, coconut, and mango coming through afterward, and a finish “full of rye spice, cocoa, espresso, mint, passionfruit, coconut, vanilla and toffee sauce.”
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Not every reviewer has been as taken with it. Breaking Bourbon’s 2025 review found that “the flavors are thinner than expected, and the mouthfeel is watery.”
Buffalo Trace is the fruitier and gentler of the two. In his review of Buffalo Trace, Phil picked up vanilla, caramel, and light oak on the nose, along with “fresh green apple, slightly tangy fruit and even a hit of strawberry.” Green apple stayed at the center of the palate, joined by soft oak, a little rye spice, caramel sauce, and milk chocolate, though he felt it “has a little more on the nose than it does on the palate.”
Breaking Bourbon’s review was kinder about the palate, saying, “where it really shines is its pure drinkability.”
Awards and Expert Scores
Buffalo Trace has the stronger recent record in spirits competitions. In recent years, the flagship bourbon won Double Gold in New York in 2025. Buffalo Trace has won Master medals at The Spirits Business’s American Whiskey Masters two years running, in 2025 and again in 2026, when one judge called it “a fantastic option for under £30.” In 2026, it also picked up Double Gold at the International Spirits Challenge and Platinum at the ASCOT Awards.
Woodford Reserve has also won medals this year, taking Silver at the 2026 San Francisco World Spirits Competition and Silver at the 2026 World Whiskies Awards.
Reviewers tend to favor Woodford. Phil Dwyer, who reviewed both bourbons for us, scored Woodford Reserve 8/10 and Buffalo Trace 7/10. Fred Minnick also included Woodford Reserve in his 2024 Top 100 American Whiskeys, noting it won a blind bourbon tasting he held for Big 12 athletic directors and university presidents.
The Availability Factor
How easy each bourbon is to buy depends a lot on where you live. In parts of the US, Buffalo Trace can be hard to find on shelves. Sazerac explains on its product availability page that “to manage our way through the shortages of our whiskey in the fairest manner possible we have placed our whiskeys on allocation.”
In his review of Buffalo Trace, Phil Dwyer pointed out how differently the bottle is treated on each side of the Atlantic, writing that “over here in the UK it is one of the easiest bottles to get a hold of anywhere, but in America, I’ve seen people fight over bottles in liquor stores.”
Woodford Reserve is much easier to find in both countries, and it is a regular fixture in US liquor stores and UK supermarkets alike.
Cocktails or Sipping: The Verdict
Bartenders rate both of these bourbons, but Woodford Reserve came out ahead when Punch asked bartenders to name their favorite bourbons for mixing in 2023. Woodford was the bottle they recommended most often. Rosie Greene, then bar manager at Furna in Brighton, called it “a real crowd-pleaser,” and Dave Taylor of Bar 1661 in Dublin described it as “one of the best all-arounders in the bourbon category.”
Buffalo Trace had its supporters too. Ian Alexander of The Dead Rabbit said it “has a lovely round and creamy texture with notes of caramel and nougat that makes it great in classic cocktails.”
The Verdict
If you mostly drink bourbon neat and enjoy a softer, fruitier style, Buffalo Trace is an easy bottle to like, as long as you can find it at a fair price. For an Old Fashioned or a Manhattan, Woodford’s higher rye content gives it more spice to stand up to sugar, bitters, and vermouth. Phil Dwyer called Woodford “such an amazing house bottle for neat pours, ice, cocktails or long drinks.” In his Buffalo Trace review, he even suggested readers would “probably have a better overall experience with Evan Williams Bottled in Bond, Woodford Reserve, or Knob Creek.”
For me, Woodford Reserve edges out Buffalo Trace. Here in the UK, both bottles usually sell for about the same price, so cost doesn’t really separate them. I find Woodford a little more complex than Buffalo Trace, and it holds up better in cocktails. When I’m choosing between the two at the same price, I pick Woodford Reserve every time. But Buffalo Trace is a marvelous bourbon and a fantastic budget option. Really, you can’t go wrong with either of them.
