If you are a fan of bourbon, you have no doubt heard of Blanton's. Even if you aren't a bourbon fan, there is still a good chance you have heard of Blanton's. It has come to be known as a "unicorn" bottle of bourbon.
Part of the reason for that is the fact that it is the original single barrel bourbon. Another reason for the popularity can be attributed to where it is made. It is made in Frankfort Kentucky at the Buffalo Trace distillery. The reason that is important is because Buffalo Trace is also the distillery that makes Pappy Van Winkle.
In fact pretty much every bourbon made at Buffalo Trace has become a unicorn bottle due to the ties to Pappy Van Winkle.
Let me explain...
Way back in 1893, there was a guy Julian Van Winkle Sr. and he started working as a salesman for a liquor wholesale company called W.L. Weller & Sons. According to Wikipedia, fifteen years later he and another employee bought the company. A short time later they bought their own distillery.
At the time, the whiskey was considered some of the best in the world and continued it's sales through prohibition as a "medicinal" product. In fact, there are still some pre-prohibition bottles kicking around down south and throughout the country. Every now and they you might see a news story about someone finding a case of Pappy that was stashed away for over a century.
After prohibition, the Pappy line was reintroduced but it is bottled and sold by the Sazerac company through their Buffalo Trace Distillery. Since the same or similar mash bill is used for many of their products, this has made the Buffalo Trace, Weller, Blanton's, Eagle Rare, and Pappy line of bourbons somewhat hard to acquire (depending on where you live).
If you want to know more about the history, head over to this page.
Anyway, given the fact that many states have placed these bottles on a lottery system for purchase, or limit you to a single bottle at a time for purchase, they have become quite hard to find. That of course has lead to illegal sales and shipment of the alcohol.
The Kentucky ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control) has been conducting raids of a local business that was illegally shipping bourbon to Washington DC for the purpose of online sales. The retail price of a regular bottle of Blanton's is something like $60, maybe a little more. I've got a couple of bottles at that price and I honestly don't think it is worth much more. It's probably not the best bourbon I have ever tried, but the scarcity leads to the demand and the inflated price.
In a recent raid, the treasury "liberated" close to 650 bottles of Blanton's that were set to be shipped to Washington DC. In a interesting twist, it turns out those bottle may have been fake and were in fact distilled in the Netherlands versus at the Buffalo Trace distillery.
"Sazerac product is more lucrative than heroin right now."
Is the comment one of the federal investigators made.
This is a multi-state investigation that has led to a number of raids across the country. Most of them have taken place in Louisville, KY at one of the premier vintage liquor stores in the state. I'm actually heading down to Louisville in a couple of months and it would have been cool to visit one of those stores.
I am guessing there is a good chance they may not be open now. Plus, if they were selling counterfeit goods, it may have not been a great idea to visit them anyway. I'm probably better off sticking to the official distilleries so I know I am getting the good stuff.
I'm already thinking we are going to make the drive over to Frankfort to visit Buffalo Trace.
I know a lot of people who are into Scotch have started to buy the bottle as an investment. It is crazy to see just how big of a business this is. When you have federal agents comparing it to the drug trade, then you know it has to be pretty big and pretty lucrative.
If you are interested in digging a bit more in depth on this. Here is one of the articles I read that lead to this post.
With the popularity across the globe of all things Whiskey/Whisky these days, you would think our community here on Hive would be a lot more active. Some of the Sub Reddits I follow about Whiskey have thousands if not tens of thousands of users. The demand is there.
If you are a lover of this spirit, please, write a post about it. We'd love to read it!