ELIJAH CRAIG SMALL BATCH
Single barrel #5289078 selected by K&L (2020)MASH BILL – 78% corn, 10% rye, 12% malted barley
PROOF – 94
AGE – 12 years 4 months
DISTILLERY – Heaven Hill
PRICE – $33
WORTH BUYING? – Pfffftyes!
Uncorked and tasted in The Year of No Buying (The what? 🔗 here.)
Any regular reader of this blog knows I’m a fan of these well-aged Elijah Craig single barrel releases of the standard Small Batch line. Sadly, they were discontinued once Heaven Hill switched over to offering their Private Barrel line in 2022, itself a single barrel variant of their standard Barrel Proof line.
Elijah Craig has so many variations, it can be hard to keep track! The rye, the Barrel Proof, the Toasted Barrel, the 18 and 23 Year… And I’ve enjoyed all of them to one extent or another. But these old 94-proof single barrel store picks still have a special place in my heart. They can evolve wildly over the life of a given bottle, a fairly reliable trend I noticed after going through a certain number of them. But they always have something worthwhile to offer.
Because of that tendency to evolve rapidly and often once uncorked, when I opened this bottle and found myself three pours in very fast, I decided to do a formal tasting right away, before the bourbon had a chance to wander off elsewhere!
At that uncorking pour, had I been tasting this blind and asked to guess, I may likely have guessed Wild Turkey Distiller’s Reserve 12 Year, the coveted Japan-only export. This Elijah Craig SiB, bottled at a similar age and slightly cooler proof, shared the WT 12’s lovely balance of dusty oak, baked cherry, juicy caramel, and orange peel accent. Bourbon perfection! Will it have already moved on from that perfection after one night?
Here we are, not even a full twenty-four hours after uncorking yet already four pours into the bottle. These brief notes were taken using both a simple brandy glass and traditional Glencairn.
COLOR – rich medium to dark oranges
NOSE – sweet oak and cherry in perfect balance, backed up by cinnamon roll dough offering its blend of baking spice and caramelized sugars
TASTE – the caramelized sugars amp up, with a nice accent of orange peel adding zip to the cherry notes, and that sweet dusty oak running beneath everything
FINISH – surprising bite for 94 proof, lingering with oak, baking spice, brown sugar, dry caramel, and day-old but still yummy pastry
OVERALL – classic Kentucky bourbon greatness
Yep. I might still mistake this for Wild Turkey. That said, its Elijah Craigness is popping more for me today. It’s that orange peel accenting the other flavors, and the particular oakiness. Tasted blind it would still be a tough call. I’d be pretty certain I was in Kentucky. But I’d be torn between the hill and the bird.
I don’t have much else to add. This isn’t some unusually complex flavor profile. There’s nothing unexpected going on here. What’s unusual is how exceptionally pleasing it is to sip for a relatively common bourbon, offered at a stupid great price. I paid $33 for this?! Yes I did. And that was just four short years ago. Sigh…
This or any other Elijah Craig Small Batch store pick is nothing anyone can get anymore. But keep an eye on Elijah Craig. The brand shares Wild Turkey’s penchant for endless variations. But it has yet to share the kickin’ chicken’s newfound inclination to give bourbon fans’ wallets the bird—eh hem. So before Heaven Hill gets any notion$ to the contrary, I’m going to enjoy Elijah Craig in its many variations while I still can.
Cheers!
The Right Spirit 