BTAC 2013 Review Smackdown Part 1 - Thomas H. Handy Sazerac

This is the first of a five part series where I document my quest to obtain all five bottles of the 2013 Buffalo Trace Antique Collection. I’ll review each one and also talk a little about how I got my hands the bottle.

December 30th, 2013. BTAC has come and gone over two months ago. Despite participating in multiple lotteries, freezing my ass off in Black Friday lines, and driving all over middle TN, I managed to get zero bottles. By this point I had long given up on finding any of the collection. It’s the day before New Years Eve and I am just making a routine stop at a local store to pick up provisions for festivities the next day. I’m casually browsing the shelves when in utter dismay I see this bottle and an Eagle Rare 17 just sitting there on the top rack. I grabbed the pair both priced at $83 each and went home with a smile on my face. I later traded the ER17 for something but I'll save that story for the ER17 review.

62.4% ABV; Aged 6 years; $83

Nose: Lots of heat initially. First sniff was a bruiser. After letting it sit for 10 minutes I get loads of wood sugar sweetness - mostly caramel and syrup but then all of the fresh spicy wintergreen mintiness and cinnamon. After about 20 minutes the cinnamon comes through even at the beginning with the sweetness. It’s a magnificent combo of spicy and sweet.

Taste: Like the nose, it is a bit hot at first. I attribute this to its young age. Also like the nose the longer you wait for it to air out the easier and more decadent it gets. The flavors heavily reinforce the nose. Crazy spicy sweet combinations of mint, anise, caramel, cinnamon, and honey. I've seen others mention this as tasting like Big Red chewing gum and I can't think of a better analogy. Loads and loads of sweet and spicy. It doesn’t taste as brutal as I would expect for a 6 year cask strength rye and it’s much more on the cinnamon spice side rather than the mint/anise side.

Finish: The finish is long and it should be considering the high proof. Sweet cinnamon gum and a deep joyful burn linger. This one is a big boy and it doesn’t go away quickly.

Notes: Handy is often regarded as the bastard child of the collection which surprises me. I don’t really get it. It seems most people who are huge whiskey nerds are way into cask strengths and also into ryes. I can only assume the craze for this bottle is less fever pitched since it is the most prevalent bottle in the collection. Even still its numbers are probably on par with other highly limited allocated items so that makes no sense to me. Release numbers aside, this is a bottle very deserving of the antique collection title and one of my favorite ryes of all time.

Rating: A