Category: Wild Turkey

Whiskey Wednesday: A Little Russell In Faith

From no Turkey to a Turkey a month it really does seem like I’m filling that Wild Turkey hole. I promise I’m not repeating myself or selling out. I like exploring things I don’t know and I love sharing experiences.

I’ve talked several times in the past about house single barrels, and I’m sure I will many more times in the future. In case you’re unfamiliar with the concept of a what a house single barrel of whiskey is, it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s an entire barrel of whiskey that has been bottled, labeled, and sold to a single bar or store.  Most bottles of whiskey are a batch of a couple dozen to a couple thousand barrels of whiskey depending on the brand. Each barrel of whiskey ages differently, aging is an organic process after all. The time spent interacting with the oak, where in the warehouse, what the weather was like over the years, all of these contribute to the flavor of the barrel. To create a consistent product these different barrels and flavors are batched together. Single barrels on the other hand celebrate those individual differences.

It’s also a collaborative effort. Sharing the barrel and story with the customer helps them build the story of their evening out on the town, while the actual selection process is a collaboration between the distillers and the account. The distillers have already narrowed down your choices to a mere handful of barrels before you start tasting anything. They’ve already passed the distillers/brands personal taste test and now it’s about trying to match that to not only what you as the buyer likes, but what you think your customers will enjoy. It’s an ever growing relationship.

And if I’m honest it is a way to keep myself and the other bartenders interested behind the bar. It’s a way to make things more personal and break up the monotony of the 369th Old Fashioned order of the week. But anything can become predictable if do it enough, even barrel picks. That’s exactly why this barrel of Russell’s Reserve caught my attention; it had a funk and an tannic note that I wasn’t expecting.

I reached out to Bruce Russell, grandson of the eponymous Jimmy Russell of Russell’s Reserve, as to why that might be and he had this to say, “The thing that I found interesting about your barrel is the fact thatit moved from the bottom floors (floor 2) of warehouse B up to floor 6 (and right by a window on the edge) after about 6 years. It’s the reason why I think your barrel has such a funky, unique flavor profile. Generally if we move barrels it is down in the warehouse. We do that if we find whiskey we really love because moving it down slows down maturation and will keep the whiskey from changing a lot. Moving it up in the warehouse will speed up the process and is usually done early on in maturation to fix a whiskey that didn’t age very much after 2-3 years. I honestly don’t know why they moved your barrel (or the other dozen or so that got moved) when they did. But it definitely gave it a palate that I haven’t seen in any other of the single barrels this year.”

So even the barrels personal journey was a unique story and it certainly seems to have left an imprint on the flavor of the whiskey. Bottled at 110 proof and non chill filtered, the nose is slightly hot, as you’d expect at 110 proof but it also has a dark chocolate and earthy note that carries into the mid palette. Once on the tongue the whiskey displays dark stone fruit, a rich brown sugar quality and a touch of nutmeg, while the finish is all of that vanilla and a hint of white pepper. It definitely has that Wild Turkey funk but it also has its own undeniable off kilter character.

Whiskey Wednesday: Shooting Turkey Rye in a Single Barrel

I don’t like to repeat myself, but the conversation about the Wild Turkey Kentucky Spirit Barrel a few weeks ago got me thinking. While I might not be a Wild Turkey Bourbon man at heart the rye has always tickled my fancy. I’d like to say that it’s simply because it’s damn good whiskey but that hasn’t always objectively been true.

I touched a bit on the history of Wild Turkey with the post of Kentucky Spirit (You can read about that here) but Wild Turkey’s history feels more tied with the pop culture of past decades that almost any other brand except Jack Daniel’s and Jim Beam.

Wild Turkedownload.jpgy as a brand was said to originate in the 1940’s when an Austin Nichols executive, Thomas McCarthy, brought some choice whiskey along on a wild turkey hunting trip in South Carolina. Enamored with the samples he brought his friends kept asking for more of “that wild turkey bourbon.” More likely it was a marketing approach to appeal to hunters and the rugged, rustic type but every whiskey loves a mythical origin story.

Turkey also appeals to me because it’s been the favored drink of self destructive writers for decades. Hunter S. Thompson was a known lover, Stephen King mentions it with distinction in a few books, and in his biography it’s listed as the drink of choice for perennial hipster literary icon David Foster Wallace.

Yet throughout all this pop culture iconography it’s always the bourbon they’re talking about. The rye always seems to be the unspoken younger sibling despite, at least from personal experience, it being the bartender favorite.

The Wild Turkey Rye is known as being a “barely legal” rye.  At 51% Rye/37% corn/12% barley it meets the bare minimum by law to be considered a rye whiskey. Yet, along with the brand Rittenhouse, it is a rye that kept rye alive in the decades when it was certainly not cool to drink. And it was certainly popular enough that when the 101 proof rye was dropped in 2012 there was enough of an outcry that it was reinstate a mere two years later. And now it might finally have its family champion.

Bruce Russell is the third generation of Turkey Russells and he is the current

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Like Grandfather, Like Grandson

driving force behind their rye, at least their high end stuff. While Jimmy Russell has always been unassuming and focused on the fact Wild Turkey makes two products, a Bourbon and a Rye, his son Eddie and grandson Bruce have championed the expansion of the range arguing differentiation through aging.

The idea that certain spots  in certain warehouses yield “honey” barrels is well established in Kentucky whiskey lore even if no one understands why that should be the case. But for Wild Turkey rye that took a new edge with the release of the Russell’s Reserve 6 Year rye and then even more focus with the Russell’s Reserve Single Barrel Rye.

While the single barrel carries no age statement it is clearly considered to be the upper echelon of the Turkey Family Rye. The 6-year was first introduced in 2007, the year after they raised the barrel entry proof from 105 to 115 and four years before the new distillery came online in 2011. This of course means there’s been a fair amount of flux in the production.

The rye itself is a fine example of Kentucky rye. It is all rich tobacco, which makes the old smoker in me shiver, a hint of dill, a full serving of citrus and a baked quality that ties in the darker spices and the heavy vanilla/caramel barrel notes. And it’s bottled at 104 proof which grants it the same oomph as its Wild Turkey 101 sibling.

The problem for me is twofold. 1) pricing and 2) transparency. The pricing hangup is easy for me to explain, I want quality at cost like it used to exist before the “Bourbon Boom” but that’s the old man in me yelling at the local teens to stay off my lawn: it ain’t going to happen. As for Number 2 there’s no denying that Jimmy, Eddie and now Bruce make good, and often great, whiskey but in an age where the consumer is more and more interested in the process of what ends up in their bottle the Russell’s Reserve Single Barrel Rye lacks any discerning features on the label. If a single barrel product is supposed to be different barrel to barrel I want to be able to compare barrels and bottlings, and nothing on the label gives me the ability to do that. There is no barrel number, warehouse ID, or even simply year or batch number. And these aren’t new requests. These are standard industry practices for single barrel and have been since single barrels were introduced in the 80s. Which brings me back around to the why of  why does the Wild Turkey Rye tickle my fancy so?

I think it has to do with placement. There is a wonderful sweet spot that the 101 Proof Wild Turkey Rye hits in flavor, cost, and history. While I can love the flavors and the drive to create more rye that the Russell’s Single barrel presents the balance between those things isn’t there for me yet.

But then again, aren’t we most critical of those we want the love the most?

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I mean if it’s good enough for Aragorn…

Whiskey Wednesday: Kentucky Spirit Soars Like A Wild Turkey

Let’s do something different, different for me at least, and talk Wild Turkey and about a single barrel not chosen by me.

Gathering together all of my Whiskey Wednesday posts, my personal whiskey collection, and the bottles I routinely stock at the bar a pretty glaring hole starts to emerge, and that hole is shaped like a damn Turkey. I couldn’t tell you why it’s there either. Wild Turkey seems like it should check all of the high proof, rough around the edges, old school bourbon boxes for me. And it’s made by Jimmy Russell! And yet it’s never close at hand for me. Let’s shake that up.

Wild Turkey was born as a Non-Distilling Producer in 1942. Austin Nichol’s & Co. were a New York based grocery wholesaler. They finally purchased the Ripy Brothers Distillery (then kimgres.jpgnown as the Boulevard Distillery) in 1971 and renamed it the Wild Turkey Distillery. This purchase made sense since the Ripy distillery was where most of the Wild Turkey Whiskey was coming from but it was terrible timing as “white goods” started gaining steam and the bourbon market tanked. The brand and distillery, were purchased by Pernod Ricard in 1980 and then sold to Gruppo Campari in 2009. But through out all of those changes Jimmy Russell has been there, making whiskey.

Jimmy’s career has lasted over 60 years; he started at
the Wild Turkey distillery well before it was the Wild Turkey distillery. In fact,

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Pictured: Jimmy Russell’s mad skills.

his tenure at wild Turkey began 10 years before the 1964 act of Congress that declared Bourbon to be a “distinctive spirit of the United States.” He was named Master Distiller in the late 60’s and is the last living Elder Statesman of Bourbon. He, along with Booker Noe and Elmer T. Lee, were the first generation of rock star distillers. These were distillers that were forcibly evicted from the seat in front of the stills to go travel and spread the good word of Bourbon. And even into his 80s he’s still traveling and distilling. And it’s a family business these days, his son Eddie is the new kid on the block with only 30+ years of distilling experience.

Jimmy Russell is essentially old school Bourbon personified. Yet he doesn’t take himself seriously and no matter who his employers are he makes no qualms about who he is or his opinions. For the past several years when doing tastings and traveling Jimmy would tell everyone at the tastings that he didn’t like low proof young whiskey, while pouring them Wild Turkey’s low proof young whiskies. Guess what Wild Turkey doesn’t mimgres-1.jpgake anymore? Seeing the Wild Turkey 101 Rye return with a vengeance was transcendent moment amidst all of these brands lowering proof and dropping age statements. Yet for all of my love of Jimmy, and his rye, when I drink the Bourbon it’s usually me trying to figure out why I don’t drink the Bourbon.

So naturally the first time Ryan Wainwright plopped this single Barrel of Wild Turkey Kentucky Spirit in front of me at Terrine (now The Ponte) my eyebrow rose skeptically. At 101 proof the Kentucky Spirit is essentially single barrel W

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Original Drop

ild Turkey 101 Bourbon- so I was expecting an incredibly earthy, slightly musty, hard oak. Instead, it turned out to be a spice bomb of a bourbon, with a dark baking spice, a dark, overripe cherry, with a farm house quality the I feel is coming from the Wild Turkey yeast. The oak and caramel in the barrel are supporting players rather than the main attraction and the proof sits right where it should granting all of the flavor with very little burn. I was genuinely surprised.

But I don’t think I should have been. This barrel taste’s like Jimmy’s bourbon philosophy, chosen by a bartender with a very specific palette. What this barrel says to me is that although Wild Turkey is quite frankly in a slump there is still liquid gold in its warehouses. There is experience, and skill, and craftsmanship that seem to be producing a sometimes muddled bourbon, but when the sun breaks through, damn, does it shine.