W L Weller Special Reserve Bourbon
- Jeffrey Lavallee
- Jul 3, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 4, 2025
ABC - $28.99
TW - $33.99
ABV - 45%
7YO
The Original Wheated Bourbon Whiskey features an exceptionally smooth taste, substituting wheat for rye grain. With a burnt orange color, Special Reserve has a sweet nose with a presence of caramel; tasting notes of honey, butterscotch and a soft woodiness; and a smooth finish with a sweet honeysuckle flair. The softer flavor notes make this bourbon great for sipping or making cocktails.
I wish I could tell you all sorts of wonderful things about Weller Special Reserve, but I can’t. I’ve never had it. I looked for it in several ABC stores - no luck. It’s all on allocation, meaning that a middle-class schlub like me is never going to get my lips on a glass of this juice. How on earth is a thirty buck bottle of mid-shelf booze on allocation? Well, welcome to Buffalo Trace, the distillery that produces the Wellers (there are several different variations of the Weller theme, including Weller Millennium. That’ll set you back $7,500 big ones. [yes, I double checked to ensure I didn’t mis-type ‘seven thousand, five hundred dollars’.])
Buffalo Trace (commonly abbreviated as ‘BT’) produces many bourbons that we all know and love even if we’ve never tasted them. Buffalo Trace Bourbon, Eagle Rare (previously covered), E.H. Taylor, Blanton’s (the one with the horsey on top), and Benchmark - to name only a few. Oh! And I forgot! They make the Van Winkle line of unobtainable bourbons.
Van Winkle?? As in “Pappy Van Winkle”?! Yes, that very one. A few years ago some unhelpful chap got on the internets and called Weller 12YO, ‘The Poor Man’s Pappy’, and that’s all she wrote. Recall the discussion several posts ago about ‘taters’ - people who have money but know nothing about whiskey and buy expensive whiskies just to resell them on the secondary market. Well, it appears that the taters went nuts with all the Wellers - even the mid-shelf Special Reserve. If the bottle says, “Weller” on it, they buy it.
There are other reasons for Weller being on the allocation list: According to our friends at cancanawards.com, there is a limited production run of Weller every year. “This limited production ensures that the quality and consistency of the product can be maintained, but it also means that there is a limited supply available for consumers.”
The missus and I visited the BT distillery several years ago. Lovely place. That’s the first time I had Blanton’s and I recall enjoying it very much. Haven’t had it since (I’ll draw your attention back to my earlier comment about BT bourbons being allocated…). So there’s not enough supply to meet the demand and I guess we’ll just have to grin and bear it. Or will we?...
A recent article from every whiskey drinker’s friend, Susannah Skiver Barton, a whiskey glut isn’t just coming, it’s already here!
“You wouldn’t necessarily know it by looking at every liquor store’s shelves full of bourbon and scotch, but whiskey is in a perilous position right now. The hundreds of brands that are de rigueur at the average retailer may soon slim down, some disappearing altogether. The firehose of new releases we’ve become accustomed to could shortly be a trickle. The ever-rising whiskey tide of the last 20 years is finally turning, thanks to inflation and overpricing. The only question is how far it will recede.”
In my opinion, this is due to several factors. First, the generation that’s turning 21 now, ‘Gen Z’, is tending to abstain from alcohol. Additionally, because whiskey must be aged for several years, whiskey distillers had to predict what they’d need in 2025 way back in 2020 (if you’ll recall, there were a lot of people sitting at home drinking booze and not doing much else). Add to that an active secondary market from the collectors and taters driving prices through the roof and distorting the whiskey outlook for all the producers. It looks like they produced too much and we’re looking at a whiskey bubble across the entire whisk(e)y industry - scotch and Irish as well.
Is this good news for Whiskey Drinking Schlubs of America (WDSoA®)? It’s too early to tell. There are more variables today then there were in the ‘60’s - the last time there was a significant decline in whiskey consumption. For example, bourbon wasn’t well-known outside of the US back then. Now there’s high demand for it in places like Japan and Australia. And while young people’s drinking habits might change in the US, that doesn’t mean the Aussies are going to stop drinking (God help us!). So, while prices might decrease, a whiskey price crash is unlikely.
As I’ve said before, the high prices have brought new players into the market and many of them don’t know the ‘whiskey rules’. They’ve brought new energy and ideas like wine casks finishing and other grains besides just corn, rye, and wheat. And before you start praying for a whiskey price crash, just remember, if whiskey prices drop significantly, that could mean that the economy as a whole is in the dumps. We’ll have whiskey drinkers seeing record-low bourbon prices, but unable to buy the bottles because they’re out of a job. I’ll stick with high prices, thanks.
That was a lot of words for a whiskey I’ve never tasted.
Tasting Notes
A sweet nose with a presence of caramel. Tasting notes of honey, butterscotch, and a soft woodiness. It's smooth, delicate and calm. Features a smooth finish with a sweet honeysuckle flair.
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If you would be so kind as to click on Susannah’s article, I know she would appreciate the clicks even if you’re not going to read it. She’s currently writing for The New Wine Review as their whisk(e)y expert.
If you want to get your hands on a wheated bourbon (51% corn, ~49% wheat instead of rye), you can try Larceny Bourbon (ABC - $27.99) or Maker's Mark Bourbon (ABC - $36.99 TW - $29.99). They will give you an idea of what a solid wheated bourbon is like. If you want to compare it to a high-rye bourbon, you could get a mini of Wild Turkey and do a tasting of the two.
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New York Sour
Our friends over at liquor.com help us with a twist on a bourbon favorite, the whiskey sour.
2 ounces rye whiskey or bourbon
1 ounce lemon juice, freshly squeezed
3/4 ounce simple syrup
1 egg white (optional)
1/2 ounce red wine
Steps
Add the whiskey, lemon juice, simple syrup and egg white (optional) into a shaker with ice and shake hard until well-chilled.
Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice.
Slowly pour the red wine over the back of a bar spoon so that the wine floats on top of the drink.
