Buffalo Trace Just Dropped Ultra-Rare Weller Millennium—and We Got a Taste
In the year 2000 in Frankfort, KY, a small cadre of wheated bourbon barrels were rolled into a Buffalo Trace warehouse and left to mature. The cherry-picked crop of barrels grew in number over the course of the decade, and Buffalo Trace blended a batch of those together to release Weller Millennium, a rare, ultra-aged 99 proof wheated whiskey.
Weller Millennium joins the lineup of legendary Weller bourbons, including William Larue Weller, Men's Journal's best bourbon of 2024. However, Millennium isn't technically a bourbon.
“It’s a blend of vintage straight wheated bourbon and wheated whiskies,” says Harlen Wheatley, Buffalo Trace’s master distiller, as we tuck into a tasting of Weller Millennium at the famed Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown, NY.
Legally, bourbon has to be 51 percent corn, with the remainder of the mashbill coming from rye, barley, or wheat. Weller Bourbon meets bourbon’s legal requirements, swapping out the rye for wheat, though the exact Weller mashbill has remained famously undisclosed since the 1840s. (That same mashbill is used for Pappy Van Winkle products, also produced by Buffalo Trace.)
Weller Millennium blends wheated bourbon with wheated whiskey, which uses 51 percent wheat. Therefore, when you blend wheated whiskey with wheated bourbon, you legally can’t call it bourbon.
Courtesy of Buffalo Trace
Wheatley is tight-lipped about the details of Weller Millennium’s blend, too, aside from sharing the barrels used were distilled in 2000, 2003, 2005, and 2006.
“In 2000, [Buffalo Trace] was in the middle of expanding [the distillery], and we knew that was a special year, full of optimism and possibility,” says Wheatley, “So we wanted to save some of these special barrels.”
The aim, per Wheatley, is to showcase the impact wheat has on whiskey’s flavor, and how well wheated mashbills can stand up over prolonged maturation periods, nearly a quarter-century in this case.
“Even though it’s mellow, wheat’s a dominant flavor,” Wheatley says. “It holds on longer [in the barrel] and won’t get so woody over time.” He’s not wrong, per our dram of Weller Millennium.
Weller Millennium Tasting Notes
It’s got an inviting softness to the nose, with hints of red-skinned apples, ample caramel, salted toffee, and a decent amount of mellowed oak. It’s silky in the mouth, coating nicely, and drinks far below its 99 proof, a number that purposefully nods to the millennium theme.
There’s a pop of oak up front that moves into salted caramel and stone fruit. I also got notes of vanilla wafers, cherry pie, macerated raisin, and graham cracker. The finish is long and dry, fading into a sweet, salty caramel note that makes you want to dive back into the glass.
I asked Wheatley if he expects more extremely aged Weller to emerge in the future, and he’s coy. “We do have some older stuff in the warehouses, yes,” he says, smirking, adding that forthcoming products aren’t a thing he’s able to discuss. When pressed on how long he thinks wheated mashbills can mature in warehouses before turning tannic or astringent, he admits, "We haven't reached it yet."
The good news: Weller Millennium is absolutely sublime. The bad news: It's extremely rare. Buffalo Trace won’t share how many bottles will be released, but it's expected to be in the hundreds, not thousands—and a single bottle costs $7,500.
