Several Stagg Jr. batches swooped in late this year from Buffalo Trace Distillery, with both 24B and 24C hitting shelves right at the 2024 buzzer. If you recall my review of the 24A batch of Stagg, this label has started to leave me a little disillusioned as of late. Batch 24A placing way down in 10th place on my power ranking of all the batches I have tried makes me wonder if there's some higher forces at work here: new blenders, changing stocks, rushed schedules? Who knows.
For now, I'll be grateful to have secured a bottle of batch 24C, which I bought with my own scratch for the purposes of a review. I have a bottle of 24B en route now too, but it was not available in time for a comparative tasting. Make sure you check back in on the Stagg Hub page from time to time (I recommend bookmarking it) to get the latest scoop on everything there is to know about Stagg—both junior and senior. So relax, don your reading spectacles, and settle in for a deep dive on what makes batch 24C tick. This is my well-triangulated opinion formed over a minimum of three tastings, tasted neat in a glencairn, in accordance with my editorial policy.
Company on Label: Buffalo Trace Distillery
Whiskey Type: Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey
Mash Bill Percentages: Undisclosed Buffalo Trace mash bill #1 (high corn, low rye, malted barley)
Proof: 128.9°
Age: NAS (rumored to be around ~8 years old)
MSRP: $70
Further identification: The third release of Stagg Jr for the 2024 calendar year is batch 24C; the bottle under review was purchased from a Virginia ABC store
Nose: The nose leads with hot and boozy vanilla extract. Angel food cake follows shortly after on the warming glass. Early on in the glass it is a hasty and hurried array of aromas: there's flashes of savory tones, toffee, and the slightly synthetic chocolate of a tootsie roll. Deep inhales produce notes that are musty, sharp, disjointed, harsh, and proofy. Vanilla and castoreum aromas are the most dominant, oddly. There's also a medicinal characteristic to this reminiscent of cherry cough syrup. Sweet tarts come to mind suddenly in this all-over-the-map pour. Play dough and popsicle sticks give the feeling of the arts and crafts department. There's plenty of unmitigated ethanol all throughout the cloud of vaporized bourbon sitting in the bulb of my glencairn. I don't like this very much, but the vanilla cake and bready tones are somewhat redeeming.
After a sip, the savory tones amplify, calling to mind a stale barbecue sauce that's been on the fridge door for too long. In contrast to the clusterfuck of early aromas, the glass has settled into a very one-dimensional profile of dull leather and brown sugar. Late in the glass is muted as can be, with some subtle floral tones, something like the perfume you might find on hugging your elderly grandmother. The empty glass smells of bar mats: stale alcohol, plastic, and regret.
Palate: Holy hot. Wow, this is an odd pour. At first taste, I find the same medicinal cherry from the nose, now magma hot, and drizzled over pancakes. If you're into cough syrup pancakes, this might be the pour for you, but for me, it's a disaster of a first sip that makes my face scrunch in disapproval. The linger is impossibly drying and leaves no desire for further sipping. Forcing myself into another sip is much of the same as the first that concludes with an alacritous wave of cinnamon hots. Tasting late in the glass reveals a stale box of fruit loops, utterly unsatisfying. With strong airation, the dominant vanilla and toffee tones return in a miniscule moment of enjoyment, if you could call it that. The finish is short, flat, and completely stale, like cherry cola gone bad. My last taste offers cinnamon graham cracker and the same short, dry, disappointing finish as the rest of the glass.
TL;DR: This batch only fluctuates between two low points: a synthetic hot mess and flat, muted tones
Rating: 1.5/5
This is the worst batch of Stagg Junior I have ever tasted. Put next to my last-place batch 13, 24C even makes that 2/5 rating seem enjoyable. I admittedly spittooned my last sip of this pour, not deeming it worthy of passing through the crucial, finite resource that is my liver. After 4 tastings of this batch, I have to say, this really isn't anything special. At times there are glimmers of hope, but they are so tamped down by flaws that I couldn't possibly endorse this batch as anything better than a hot mess.
Perhaps it's due to the rushed release of both 24B and 24C dropping right at the tail end of the 2024 calendar year that forced the team to have to slap a subpar product together, or perhaps the stocks of well-aged bourbon typically set aside for this label are just not producing the flavors they once did. Since moving to the 3-release-per-year cadence, I've really been quite disappointed in the quality of these batches overall. I can certainly say with confidence that this is one I won't be sipping again.
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