George T. Stagg Bourbon (2017) Review

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Most Buffalo Trace Antique Collection (BTAC) enthusiasts – and I’m talking the ones that have experience with multiple release years – believe that there was a change in overall profile for George T. Stagg (GTS) starting in 2016. While the bottle outwardly looks the same, the profile is said to have lost some of the more mature notes while gaining brighter ones. For instance, more fruit/cherry notes began to appear where there previously tobacco, chocolate and heavy amounts of oak.

People can speculate all they want (and trust me, I do!) but the reason why this happened had a large part to do with Buffalo Trace executives ordering that more bottles be created for each BTAC release.  This led to the batch sizes ballooning year after year. Just for reference, the total number of barrels selected for the 2017 release of GTS grew from 142 in 2016 to 309 in 2017 – that’s more than double! On top of that, the calculated barrel evaporation loss was much less in 2017 than 2016 – 54% compared to 77% This has inevitably led to consumers believing the barrel pick team was allowing more barrels to enter the program that previously would have missed the cut.

One more quick thing to note: This was the first year that the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection stopped using hand-written labels on their bottles and began to use the “simulated handwriting” font.  That tradition continues through today.

Buffalo Trace Antique Collection – George T. Stagg

The barrels for the 2017 release were distilled in the Spring of 2002 and saw maturation in Warehouses C, K, M and Q on Floors 1, 2, 3 and 6. I know that doesn’t tell us a whole lot, but it’s something. All of these warehouses are brick and have been around for decades. They use steam heat to ensure that the barrels inside never go below 54 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the point where barrels become dormant. But don’t confuse this with heat-cycling because Buffalo Trace does not have massive spikes and falls in temperature over the course of their winter like Brown-Forman warehouses do.

So how does the 2017 George T. Stagg taste? Let’s find out. I sampled this neat in a glencairn.

Tasting Notes

Nose: This has a very rich and dessert-like nose. The amount of chocolate and heavy oak is really enjoyable to find. There is also a lot of cherry licorice scents. Sweetness comes from a rather simple, but robust amount of caramel. There is even a little bit of leather in the mix. This is a very nice nose, but honestly nothing too crazy shows itself like I would have expected.

Palate: Leather, chocolate eclairs and plenty of seasoned oak. This is a powerful cacophony of flavors, but the oak doesn’t exactly come off the palate in a way that a 15 year Pappy Van Winkle does (I’m probably going to get a lot of hate mail on that one). It could taste older and more mature, but I don’t find it to be that way.

The palate seems to have a powerful, prickly rye spice that is very aggressive…. and I like it! Those prickly spices also seem to be centered around cinnamon, nutmeg and pepper.  Fruit notes seem younger than normal with cherry and citrus leading the way. I was expecting the fruit to be more like the preserved kind or the kind in a fruitcake, but this is what it is. It’s still absolutely delicious and the heat is well-controlled throughout the entire session.

Finish: The finish has some smoldering heat to it. There is plenty of oak, but it’s not over-oaked. The sweetness on the end is a little more subdued, but everything seems quite balanced. Lingering notes of chocolate and cherries seem to be the most recognizable flavors. The baking spices from the palate follow as well. The finish lasts for a very long time. It’s great!

Score: 9/10

Wonderful balance, great viscosity and powerful intensity. This is a special bourbon that you can tell was made for special occasions. Oddly, I think that some of the rye-forward notes are a little out of place for GTS, but that’s what makes it unique. It breaks the mold a little bit from what GTS used to be before 2017 and where it went in the future from 2018 and onwards.

Final Thoughts

It’s always hard to wrap up a review of such a revered bourbon in any meaningful way. Should you try to buy this or at least taste it? Yes. But price and availability are going to be showstoppers for most people. There’s also the question of if the 2017 release of George T. Stagg should be pursued over any of the other releases.

For most lovers of GTS, the 2017 release isn’t considered the cream of the crop as much as the ones that came before it. As far as modern releases go, many enthusiasts I’ve talked to that have a lot of experience with GTS seem to prefer the 2020 or 2023 versions over the 2017 through 2019 versions. As always, your mileage may vary, but I’d consider it to be my lucky day if I was given the chance to drink any release from this storied label – and you should too.