Weller Special Reserve Single Barrel #414 White Chocy Cocoa 700ml 45%
Barrel #414 · Selected for Australia
There are plenty of Weller bottles that are hard to come by here. This one we have never had at all.
White Chocy Cocoa is the first Weller Special Reserve Single Barrel selected specifically for the Australian market. Earlier this year we were given the chance to taste through six individual barrels and send one of them home. Same wheated bourbon, same approachable 45%, but with the chance to see what happens when you stop blending barrels together and let one speak entirely for itself.
One of the six kept pulling us back. All the caramel and soft wheated sweetness you expect, and then something else running straight through the middle of it.
Chocolate. Not big bitter dark chocolate. Softer and creamier than that, milk chocolate at first, then heading somewhere unmistakably sweet and milky.
Someone said Milkybar. That was pretty much the end of the discussion.
The bottle
| Volume | 700ml |
| Strength | 45% ABV, 90 proof |
| Age | 7 Years Old |
| Style | Kentucky Straight Wheated Bourbon, single barrel |
| Barrel | #414 |
| Lot | 18-J-23 |
| Warehouse location | M.-4-065 |
| Distillery | Buffalo Trace Distillery, Frankfort, Kentucky |
How it drinks
Why Weller
The Weller name goes back to William Larue Weller, one of the early pioneers of wheated bourbon in Kentucky. Rather than rye as the secondary grain, Weller used wheat, giving a softer and sweeter style that became synonymous with his name and continues through the W.L. Weller family made at Buffalo Trace today.
Special Reserve sits at the gateway to that family and is the gentlest read on the wheated mash bill. Drawn from one barrel rather than blended, this bottling carries that cask's own character instead of the averaged profile of the standard release.
A piece of Weller history
There is something in seeing the first Australian Weller Special Reserve Single Barrel land here with a barrel we actually got to choose. From six barrels in Kentucky to one bottle carrying a name that could probably only have come from us.
White Chocy Cocoa. Barrel #414, and a bloody tasty little piece of Weller history.