The alarm clock hasn’t even gone off yet and half the country is already thinking about bourbon. It’s in the coffee mug on the workbench, the flask in the deer stand, the bottle on the shelf that only comes down when the kids finally move out. Bourbon isn’t just a drink in America – it’s a handshake, a memory, a reward for another year in the books. But here’s the hard truth nobody wants to say out loud: the wood that makes bourbon taste like bourbon is running low.
White oak doesn’t grow fast. It takes eighty to a hundred years before a tree is ready to become the charred inside of a barrel that turns raw whiskey into something you’d fight your brother-in-law for on Christmas Eve. Loggers, developers, and plain old time have been chewing through America’s white oak forests faster than they can grow back. By law, real bourbon has to age in a brand-new charred oak barrel every single time. No oak, no bourbon. Simple as that.
That’s where a new auction comes in, and it’s about a lot more than just grabbing a rare bottle to show off.
Starting November 21st and running until the stroke of midnight on December 1st, a brand-new luxury spirits platform called Legacy de Forge (powered by BlockBar) is putting one entire barrel of Colonel E.H. Taylor, Jr. Single Barrel Bourbon up for grabs. This isn’t some dusty bottle somebody found in grandpa’s attic. This is a full barrel you get to pick yourself, straight from the rickhouse at Buffalo Trace Distillery.
The opening bid is twenty grand. You can bid as many times as your bank account allows, and every single dollar raised goes to the White Oak Initiative – the group fighting tooth and nail to keep white oak standing tall across the country.
What do you actually get if your paddle ends up highest?
You, plus seven of your closest buddies (or your kids if they’ve finally started acting right), fly down to Frankfort, Kentucky. Sazerac’s barrel-select team rolls out the red carpet. You walk the rickhouses, pull samples with a thief, taste bourbon that’s been sleeping longer than some of your trucks have been on the road, and you pick the exact barrel you want. That barrel gets dumped, bottled with your name on every label, and the empty barrel itself comes home with you – perfect for the man cave or the lake house.
While you’re there, you get the full VIP treatment: a private behind-the-scenes tour of Buffalo Trace (places regular tours don’t even know exist), a night in the exclusive Stagg Lodge, and a dinner cooked by a private chef who knows his way around a cast-iron skillet and a bottle of Blanton’s.
It’s the kind of trip you brag about for the rest of your life.
Elizabeth Wise, who wears two big hats – Chair of the White Oak Initiative and Chief Global Government Affairs Officer for Sazerac – put it plain: “Colonel E.H. Taylor, Jr.’s pioneering vision continues to inspire and guide our industry today. Much like white oak saplings that grow straight and tall to eventually be transformed into bourbon barrels that add flavor and color to our uniquely American spirit, Taylor had foresight and purpose. Through this auction, we’re honoring Taylor’s standards for excellence while supporting the White Oak Initiative’s critical work to ensure bourbon’s future.”
Jason Meyer, the Executive Director of the White Oak Initiative, didn’t mince words either: “The future of America’s bourbon industry is inseparable from the future of its white oak forests. This auction celebrates that connection and the shared commitment of partners like Sazerac to ensure white oak continues to thrive for generations to come.”
The White Oak Initiative got its start back in 2017 when a handful of sharp people from the University of Kentucky, the Dendrifund, and the American Forest Foundation looked around and realized nobody was really in charge of making sure there would still be white oak a hundred years from now. Today it’s a big tent – distillers, loggers, landowners, conservation groups, universities, and even federal agencies all sitting at the same table trying to figure out how to plant more trees than we cut.
On the other side of the partnership is Sazerac, the family-owned giant that’s been in the spirits game for over four hundred years combined experience. They own Buffalo Trace, Eagle Rare, Weller, Blanton’s, Fireball, Southern Comfort, and more brands than you can count on both hands while holding a glass. When they say they’re worried about white oak, people listen.
Colonel E.H. Taylor bourbon itself is no everyday pour. It’s bottled-in-bond, small batch, and made the old way in warehouses Taylor built back when Ulysses S. Grant was still president. Picking your own single barrel of it is about as close to bourbon royalty as most of us will ever get.
So yeah, twenty thousand dollars is real money. But you’re not just buying whiskey and a hell of a weekend. You’re buying the guarantee that your grandkids will still be able to crack open a bottle of real Kentucky bourbon when they’re your age – the same way you did with your dad, and he did with his.
The auction is live right now over at legacydeforge.com/release. You have to sign up for an account, but that takes about two minutes. After that, the bid button is right there staring at you.
One barrel. One chance. And a shot at making sure the thing we love never runs out of the wood that makes it taste like home.
Raise a glass to that.
