Bourbons That Taste Like E.H. Taylor (But Are Easier to Find)

E.H. Taylor Small Batch and Eagle Rare 10 Year are made from the same thing: Buffalo Trace's low-rye mash bill #1, distilled in the same Frankfort stills and aged in the same rickhouses. That shared DNA is why they smell like siblings — dusty caramel, orange oil, a little leather and tobacco — and why our panel put Eagle Rare closer to the reference than any bonded bottle from another distillery.

The gap the panel measured is proof and age presentation. Eagle Rare is bottled at 90 proof with a 10-year age statement; E.H. Taylor Small Batch is Bottled in Bond at 100 proof with no age statement but a similar span in wood. The extra ten proof points give E.H. Taylor a firmer, drier, more peppery mid-palate, while Eagle Rare is rounder and a touch sweeter. A bottle of Eagle Rare left open a while, or E.H. Taylor cut with a few drops of water, closes most of the distance.

The honest caveat: Eagle Rare is itself a semi-allocated Buffalo Trace bottle, so it is easier to find than E.H. Taylor but not always easy. If you want E.H. Taylor's exact flavor family, this is the bottle. If you want something that is reliably on a shelf, keep reading.

This is the pick that scores highest on quality and second on likeness, and the distinction matters. Henry McKenna 10 Year is Bottled in Bond — exactly 100 proof, one distillation season, at least four years (here a full ten) in a federally supervised Heaven Hill warehouse — and it is bottled one barrel at a time. That is the same bonded architecture as E.H. Taylor Small Batch, built on Heaven Hill's traditional low-rye mash bill rather than Buffalo Trace's.

What you get is E.H. Taylor's refinement with more oak underneath it: deep caramel, baking spice, toasted grain and a long, dry, tannic finish that reads as genuinely old. Our panel kept describing it as "E.H. Taylor with an extra couple of years in the barrel." It won Best in Show at the 2019 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, which is exactly why it is no longer a $35 sleeper — but it is still findable in a way E.H. Taylor often is not.

Because it is a single barrel, the exact profile shifts bottle to bottle. That variability is part of the appeal for E.H. Taylor fans who like the bonded, hand-selected character.

If E.H. Taylor Small Batch's identity is "an elegant, mid-aged, 100-proof bonded bourbon," then Heaven Hill 7 Year Bottled in Bond is its structural twin from a different distillery. Both are bottled in bond at exactly 100 proof; both sit around the seven-year mark in wood; both aim for balance and refinement rather than a flavor gimmick.

The difference is house character. Heaven Hill's traditional mash bill and yeast bring a slightly softer, more floral, honey-and-cinnamon profile against E.H. Taylor's drier, more tobacco-and-licorice Buffalo Trace signature. On the palate the two track closely on weight and heat — that shared 100-proof, bonded backbone is doing most of the work — and diverge mainly on the specific spices.

For the money, this is the value answer for anyone who liked E.H. Taylor specifically for its bonded, 100-proof structure rather than its Buffalo Trace flavor. It is widely stocked and less than two-thirds of E.H. Taylor's marked-up price.

Russell's Reserve 10 Year is Wild Turkey's mid-aged flagship, and it lands close to E.H. Taylor for a slightly different reason than the Buffalo Trace bottles do. Its mash bill carries a bit more rye, and Wild Turkey's famously low barrel-entry proof means ten years in oak produces a rich, layered bourbon rather than a hot one.

Against the reference pour it reads as E.H. Taylor with the spice dial turned up: the same caramel-and-vanilla core and dry oak finish, but more cinnamon, clove and pepper riding on top. At 90 proof it is a touch softer in weight than E.H. Taylor's bonded 100, which keeps it from scoring higher on similarity even though the flavor family overlaps.

Our panel liked it a lot on its own merits — 8.4 on quality — and flagged it as the best pick for someone who found E.H. Taylor a little restrained and wants more going on in the glass.

The single most underrated fact about E.H. Taylor Small Batch is that its most important spec — Bottled in Bond, 100 proof — is legally identical to a bourbon that costs under $40. Evan Williams Bottled-in-Bond is exactly 100 proof, one distillation season, aged at least four years in a Heaven Hill warehouse, and it delivers the same firm, dry, structured mouthfeel that the bonded designation guarantees.

Where it falls short of E.H. Taylor is age and polish. Evan Williams BiB is younger, so it shows less of the deep oak and layered spice that a few extra years give the reference pour, and its caramel-and-corn profile is simpler. Our panel described it as "the same skeleton with less on the bones."

That is exactly why it earns a place: for a bonded 100-proof daily pour, or for an Old Fashioned where a marked-up allocated bottle would be wasted, it scratches the E.H. Taylor itch for a third of the price.

Knob Creek 12 Year answers a specific question: what if I want E.H. Taylor's 100-proof weight but with an explicit, older age statement? Twelve years in Jim Beam's warehouses build a deep, resinous oak note and a dark-caramel richness that even the reference pour cannot fully match.

The reason it scores lowest here is the Beam signature. The distillery's house yeast brings a toasted-peanut, nutty character that has no counterpart in E.H. Taylor's Buffalo Trace profile — our panel called it "the right proof and age, the wrong accent." If that Beam note is one you enjoy, none of this is a drawback; if you are matching E.H. Taylor precisely, it is the clearest point of difference in the flight.

Treat it as the pick for oak lovers: a genuinely aged, 100-proof bourbon at a fair price, in the same structural neighborhood as E.H. Taylor even if the flavor accent is its own.