A  private barrel selection often called a "store pick" is where a store owner works with the distillery to hand select a barrel which is then bottled exclusively for their store. Buffalo Trace offers this opportunity to select stores and also some lucky bourbon groups and lottery winners as part of a program called Single Barrel Select.

 

Commonly, barrels selected for this program are of exceptional quality. This site generally does not track these picks.  Here's why.

​

There are way too many to track. Hundreds of them in fact.

 

Generally there is nothing special about the label or box used for these picks.

 

Usually, the only indicator of the pick is a small sticker placed on the bottle indicating the store or group name who conducted the pick. Often groups or other individuals will add additional stickers, labels or even (shutter) waxes to a bottle. An example of a sticker is a group who releases a bottle annually as part of a charitable auction known as "Medicinal Whiskey." While their beautifully designed labels are striking, and the proceeds are for a good cause, they are essentially aftermarket designed labels stuck on top of the standard Blanton's label. If the distillery didn't add it, I'm not interested in collecting it and the value should be no more than any other Blanton's bottle.​​

 

It's important to note that for many years, particularly before the current demand existed, Buffalo Trace did offer a private label program.  This wasn't a barrel pick, instead, clients, including liquor stores, were able to have Buffalo Trace customize and apply a private label. These were rare and several examples can be found on the Rare Bottle page of this site. 

​

In general, this site catalogs truly unique expressions and bottle labelings.