Working with Outlaw State of Kind, Chris and Morgane Stapleton's charity, Buffalo Trace Distillery and the E.H. Taylor, Jr. brand are auctioning off bottles from an extremely limited single barrel pick, putting bourbon hype culture to good use.
Bidding is online and open now, with the estimated value set at $5,000 (the highest bid at publishing was just under $3,000). The whiskey is 9-year-old bourbon proofed to 100. Representatives for Buffalo Trace, E.H. Taylor's parent distillery, say there are less than 100 bottles available from the single barrel selection. Proceeds from initial auctions will go to immediate disaster relief in Texas and Kentucky. Following bottles will be used similarly as the year goes on. The one-off bottling celebrates the 124th anniversary of the passing of the Bottled-In-Bond Act of 1897.
For the uninitiated, in 1897, Americans were blessed with the first consumer protection legislation ever passed. It didn't come in the form of a guarantee of food safety or safeguards on price gouging; it came in the shape of a liquor bottle. The Bottled-In-Bond Act of 1897, which is celebrating its 124th anniversary, offers distilleries a means to communicate to drinkers the quality of their whiskey with a simple tax strip across the cork. For Chris Stapleton, it means he's going to make a wicked album.
"The first glass of E. H. Taylor, Jr. I ever had was in the studio. Vance Powell, engineer of both music and good times, brought a bottle to the session for inspiration," Stapleton said. "That week we recorded an entire album, and that album was Traveller. We’ve made it a point to keep a bottle around ever since."
