This bottle will always hold a special place in my heart. When I first got into bourbon, I got it s a gift for my dad, purely going off of the name itself. I knew nothing about the actual bottle, just the legend of ‘E. H. Taylor.’ As such, this is really hard for me to be unbiased about, but I will do my best.
If you look up the tasting notes according to Buffalo Trace, it’s pretty brief but clear-cut. “Tastes of caramel corn sweetness, mingled with butterscotch and licorice. The aftertaste is a soft mouth-feel that turns into subtle spices of pepper and tobacco.” An apt, if not basic summary of a bourbon that provides significantly more depth than given credit for.
There is an interesting phenomenon in the bourbon world, where anything with the name small batch on it has this connotation of a basic, simply aged, 4 year bourbon. In some cases that would be a fair summarization, but not in this one. Is it the entry level E. H. Taylor? Yes. Is it way over the MSRP? Maybe, depends on where you buy it. Should you give it a try? Absolutely.
From my perspective, this bottle is fairly unique. It offers a high-quality taste for maintaining a fairly low aftermarket price. The thing for me that separates this is really the packaging even if you have to pay $60-$70, you are going to have a hard time finding a bottle at that price point with exterior packaging like this. It shows a certain amount of care and confidence in the individual bottle.
Like I said previously, I am biased towards this bottle. But, it still holds its ground as a top 5 bottle in my cabinet, going against some of the big ones like Parker’s Heritage, Blood Oath, and Blanton’s.