Buffalo Trace On Track With Experimental, Farm Bourbons

By Nino Kilgore-Marchetti / August 10, 2015

Kentucky’s Buffalo Trace distillery, in its quest to produce ever more interesting bourbon, announced today some experimental results from the first round of barrels which have been resting for a year inside its Warehouse X. This facility is used by the brand to test out different outside of the box bourbon ideas. Along with this news is the latest word on a small batch, farm to table bourbon being developed from on-site crops.

A Buffalo Trace employee studies one of the Warehouse X barrels (image via Buffalo Trace)

With regards to the Warehouse X news, the distillery said it has been measuring the natural effects of sunlight on aging bourbon barrels that were first put into the experimental warehouse in June of last year. So-called “distillery experts” are

measuring the temperature and humidity inside each of the four chambers and breezeway, as well as inside one barrel in each chamber and the breezeway. They are also measuring the temperature and humidity outside of Warehouse X.

Just within the last year, the distillery has recorded 40,000 different data points and registered temperatures ranging from 105 degrees down to -10 degrees.

Recent samplings have been enlightening and have assured tasters that this large scale experiment is right on track for yielding valuable knowledge and expertise with future results.

“We’re only one year into this experiment and we already have lots of information to analyze,” Master Distiller Harlen Wheatley said in a statement. “Findings to date have assured us that we’re on the right path to some enlightening discoveries.”

The first corn crop growing at the Buffalo Trace distillery (image via Buffalo Trace)

Meanwhile, word from the farm-like portion of the Buffalo Trace distillery campus is that the first experimental “farm to table” corn crop “is growing quite nicely.” Plans for this call for a future estate bourbon which will likely be released at some point in the distant future with its own brand identity.