Nissan has Infiniti. The Gap has Banana Republic. As any business or marketing student will tell you, there’s power in a brand. If consumers associate a set of unshakable qualities with a certain company, sometimes it’s easier just to create an entirely new thing than swim against the tide.
The Buffalo Trace distillery is no different, with about twenty or so different brands under the distillery’s umbrella. For drinkers who want to pay rock bottom prices for whiskey that they carry out by the handle, there’s Ancient Age. For tech bros that can’t stand to have someone tell them they can’t have something and are willing to pay thousands of dollars to prove it, there’s Pappy Van Winkle. For bourbon drinkers who are apoplectic at the thought of drinking something without an age statement, Eagle Rare has always had their back.
This brings us to Benchmark. For the longest time, Benchmark was Buffalo Trace’s value brand. I haven’t heard anyone I know or any source that I’ve read give a full-throated defense of the standard Benchmark as anything approaching “good.” The reviews of this stuff is the whiskey equivalent of asking a friend whether your blind date is attractive, and getting an answer like, “She’s really into geology!”
“Benchmark Single Barrel is the liquid form of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” and its bombastic predictability is exactly the kind of thing that can make a dull moment a little more fun.”
So here comes Benchmark with an upmarket version of a budget product. Keep in mind we live in a world where Buffalo Trace exists for $22 or so. The regular benchmark is about ten bucks, but the Benchmark Single Barrel is $24. Which raises some interesting questions: is the Benchmark Single Barrel the distillery’s best “worst” product, or is the standard Buffalo Trace their worst “best” product? And is one better than the other?
Having had the regular Buffalo Trace earlier this evening before penning this review, I can say this (noting that it deserves a review of its own eventually): for a $22 bourbon, the standard Buffalo Trace has a good amount of depth and sophistication. I find it to be surprisingly herbal/floral compared to its contemporaries.
The Benchmark Single Barrel is most definitely not that—to the point where it’d be hard to see how it came from the same distillery. The BSB is utterly unchallenging, and some might argue one-note. If you want corn sweetness, this bourbon will deliver it. I actually find it a little more sweet, in fact, than Mellow Corn, which is still the veritable alpha wolf of delivering flavor-for-spend. If you want something multilayered and sophisticated, and if you’re the type of person who calls up every liquor store in the surrounding counties looking for rare bourbon, I’m very clearly willing to bet the Benchmark Single Barrel is not going to impress you. You might like it, but I doubt you’ll sip it and weep tears of joy.
But here’s the thing—and I stand by this: sometimes unchallenging is exactly what I want. Benchmark Single Barrel is the liquid form of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” or Jon Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.” As the saying goes, don’t bore us, get to the chorus. I’m not going to play these songs on loop, but sometimes they’re comfortable and comforting. Their bombastic predictability is exactly the kind of thing that can make a dull moment a little more fun.
And so it is with the Benchmark Single Barrel. I found my personal bliss point with this stuff when poured over ice. The dilution doesn’t do anything to dull the corn sweetness, but it does bring out some wonderful chewiness, a little salinity, and some interesting and fruity secondary flavors. Still, we’re here for the corn show: that inimitable funky sweetness that makes bourbon what it is.
And by the way—I was dumbstruck that this stuff is 95 proof. It drinks a lot more genteel than it has any right to be for a sub-$25 product at this strength. As such, it’s unchallenging in the most positive connotations of that term: there’s nothing here that will assault the senses or create an untoward impression. Just looking at the price and the label, you’d expect ethanol reek on the nose and no small amount of burn on the way down, though you’ll experience neither.
Hold my feet to the fire and I will agree that Buffalo Trace is probably the better product. However, I think the Benchmark Single Barrel is arguably the more fun product, and it’s wound up in the cart more often. Accept it for what it is, and I think it’ll put a smile on your face.
(By the way: if you’re wondering how the Single Barrel compares to the Benchmark Small Batch, the Small Batch is a little more sedate in its ABV and a little more corn-heavy where the Single Barrel is a little more woody and full-proofed. You won’t go wrong with either.)
