Bulleit hasn’t added a permanent bottle to its lineup since the 95 Rye showed up in 2011. That’s a long time for a brand this big to sit on two products, so when I heard the third one would be a blend of the bourbon and the rye in a single bottle, my first reaction was honestly a shrug. Bourbon-rye blends are everywhere now. High West built a whole company on the idea. But the blue label started hitting Jacksonville shelves this month, it’s $29.99, and I’m not too proud to admit that the shrug turned into curiosity pretty fast once I had a glass in hand.
What’s Actually in the Bottle
The name is the first thing to clear up. ’87 is not an age statement. It’s the year the modern Bulleit brand was founded, and the whiskey inside is a minimum of four years old. The bourbon half is distilled, aged, and finished in Shelbyville, Kentucky. The rye half is distilled and aged in Indiana, which is a polite way of saying MGP, the same source that feeds the 95 Rye, and it makes the trip down to Kentucky before anything gets blended.
Here’s the part that’s a little different from the usual bourbon-rye mash-up. Instead of dumping the two together and calling it a day, Bulleit finishes each whiskey separately for four to six weeks with toasted American oak and French oak staves, and only then marries them. Bulleit’s R&D manager Phil Gelineau described it as a cake: the bourbon is the sponge, the rye is the chocolate shavings, and the staves are the buttercream holding it together. It’s a cute line, but after a few pours I think it’s also an accurate one. The whole thing lands at 90 proof.
Tasting Notes
I tasted this neat in a Glencairn, twice over two evenings, with about 15 minutes of rest each time. Ninety proof doesn’t need water, so I left it alone.
What surprised me is how much this drinks like its own thing. I was braced for “Bulleit Bourbon with a little more spice,” and that’s not what this is. The stave finishing rounds off the sharp corners that both core Bulleit products have. If you find the orange label a little hot and grassy for neat sipping, and I do, ’87 fixes that problem without going soft.
The Cigar I Reached For
A 90-proof blend with this much toasted sweetness wants a medium-bodied cigar that brings its own spice, not something that will steamroll it. I went with an Oliva Serie V Melanio Robusto, and it was the right call. The Melanio’s Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper gives you coffee, cedar, and a peppery Nicaraguan core that lines up almost perfectly with the rye side of the blend. The bourbon sweetness in ’87 takes the edge off the Melanio’s pepper in the first third, and by the second third the cigar’s cocoa notes were pulling the butterscotch out of the glass.
If you want to go cheaper, a Brick House Maduro works too, though the maduro sweetness starts to stack on top of the whiskey’s sugar and it gets a little one-note by the end. I’d stay away from anything Connecticut-shade here; ’87 will walk right over it.
Coffee, cedar, and Nicaraguan pepper that meets Bulleit ’87’s rye spice head-on. My pairing pick for this bottle.
How It Stacks Up at $30
This is the price bracket where I do most of my actual drinking, so I take it seriously. Bulleit ’87 is competing with Bulleit’s own bourbon and rye at roughly the same money, plus High West Double Rye and Bourye if you’re shopping the blend category specifically (though Bourye costs about three times as much). Against the two Bulleit siblings, I think ’87 is the best neat pour of the three, and it’s not particularly close. Against Double Rye, it’s sweeter and less aggressive, which will be a plus or minus depending on how much you like rye.
The knock is depth. Four years plus a few weeks on staves is not a lot of time, and you can tell. There’s no leather, no dark fruit, none of the things that show up at eight or ten years. It’s a well-made young whiskey, and $30 is exactly what a well-made young whiskey should cost. Bulleit didn’t overreach on price, which I appreciate in a year where every other release seems to have another zero on it.
Final Verdict
Bulleit ’87 is not going to make anybody’s year-end top ten list, and it doesn’t need to. What it does is give Bulleit a bottle you can actually pour neat without reaching for the ice or the cocktail shaker, and it does it for $30 as a permanent release you’ll be able to find at Publix and Total Wine without a lottery. The separate stave finishing is a real technique, not marketing, and it shows in the glass. If you already keep Bulleit Bourbon around for Old Fashioneds, this is worth grabbing as the one you sip while you make them. Light up a Melanio, pour two fingers, and it’s a very good Friday night for under $45 all in.
Medium-bodied Nicaraguans and maduros that hold their own against rye-forward whiskey.