Buffalo Trace Distillery

Buffalo Trace sits on a property in Frankfort, Kentucky where someone has been making whiskey since 1775 — when Hancock and Willis Lee set up shop along the buffalo crossing on the Kentucky River that gives the place its modern name. The first proper distillery went up in 1812. E.H. Taylor Jr. bought it in 1870 and christened it the Old Fire Copper (O.F.C.) Distillery, the name still pressed onto a handful of releases today. George T. Stagg picked up the property from Taylor in 1878 and, in 1886, installed steam heating in the warehouses — the first climate-controlled whiskey aging in America. It was one of only four distilleries granted federal permission to keep distilling through Prohibition on a medicinal-whiskey permit. Sazerac bought it from Schenley in 1992, and the campus was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2013. Today it pumps out roughly 2.65 million gallons of whiskey a year across twelve warehouses holding more than 320,000 barrels. A tour guide on Allan's shift will tell you they fill 2,200 to 2,300 white-oak barrels a day, and that bourbon stops aging once the warehouse drops below 44°F — which is why they pump steam in during winter. That's the operation behind everything from the $25 everyday flagship to the bottles that move resale markets. ## What people say about the bottles The 2024 Antique Collection — the once-a-year drop of the distillery's most allocated whiskeys — landed in October with a $149.99 MSRP per bottle and the usual unicorn-hun…