Wild Turkey Master Distiller Eddie Russell stood in the distillery’s McBrayer rickhouse, surrounded by 53-gallon White American Oak barrels. All filled with deliciously complex bourbon whiskey.
Russell, son of legendary Wild Turkey Master Distiller Jimmy Russell, had just come upon a number of the barrels — 13, 14 and 15 years old — stocked away in the middle and upper floors.
He readied his palate.
“If all of my bourbon could taste like this, I’d be a very happy man,” he says. “It was just fantastic.
“Then I got to thinking about, ‘What am I going to do with it?’”
Surely he could think of something.
“Well, 10-year-old, for me, is the perfect age for bourbon. Then I looked around, and I have a little bit of 20-year-old. I don’t know how that sneaked by, maybe I hid it from Jimmy, I’m not sure.”
Eddie Russell, who in June celebrated his 35 anniversary at Wild Turkey, incorporated the older bourbon with the spirit filling the younger barrels.
“It’s a little bigger and bolder,” he says. “It’s more what I think of an old-style Wild Turkey.”
Bourbon from the 1970s and 1980s, people have told Eddie Russell, somehow tasted different.
“Sort of my mindset anymore is doing things the way Jimmy was doing them back in those days,” Eddie says. “The non-chill filtered, the more viscosity up front, a little creamy sweetness, and then that big spiciness in the middle.”
In 2015 Wild Turkey released a 17-year-old, 86.8-proof bourbon, the first in its Master’s Keep series, packed with flavors of vanilla, oak and caramel with an underlying burn on the back end that belies its relatively low proof.
Decades, the next edition in the series, the product of Russell’s latest orphan rescue, is set for release next year.
“The Master’s Keep 17 was so special because it was aged different than anything we’ve ever done, which was in brick warehouses,” Eddie Russell says.
“It was only 89 proof when we dumped it. It kept a lot of that sweet softness that Jimmy has always liked at the beginning of the bourbon, with the big spiciness and a little wood taste.
“That was just so special. I’ve been fooling with that for 17 years, so to make that the first release was pretty neat. What I was thinking about with it was to show how different it can be with one recipe.”
One recipe, passed on from distiller to distiller, from one generation to the next. From Jimmy Russell to his son, Eddie, to his son, Bruce, who is just in his 20s.
“I still think you have to go with the way bourbon’s always been made,” Jimmy Russell says. More rye and barley malt and less corn. Wild Turkey’s own, proprietary yeast. Distilled at lower proof and barreled — in No. 4-char American white oak casks. Aged seven, 10, 12 years.
Do it right, Jimmy says, or don’t to it at all.
Some of the differences among the three generations are obvious, others more subtle.
Jimmy’s still in charge, of course, Eddie says.
“We just do what he tells us.”
All three men laugh.
Jimmy’s the traditionalist, always determined to stand his ground and maintain the tried and the true. Eddie gravitates toward releasing older whiskies, for instance, and Bruce has a passion for rye, which, though it’s seeing a resurgence, Wild Turkey really never stopped making.
“I think the resurgence has kind of come from my generation,” Bruce says, by way of people who were “looking for something unique, looking for something they can call their own. It’s a little bit different, and I also think a lot of (the credit) goes to the bartenders and what they’ve done to kind of bring back cocktails that haven’t been popular since the Prohibition era.”
When Old-Fashioned and Manhattans were made with rye. Wild Turkey 101 Rye, in fact, is only available in bars.
“Unfortunately, during the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s people went away from that, and even in the classic whiskey cocktails, people were serving them with bourbon, which actually wasn’t tradition,” Bruce says. “Thankfully, those bartenders have studied, they’ve researched and they’ve really grasped what those classic cocktails are all about.
“I’m kind of in love with the stuff. I’ll drink it neat, I’ll drink it in a cocktail; any way I can get it. It makes me happy people are actually starting to make rye again.”
Wild Turkey will probably release a third edition in the Master’s Keep series. But it won’t be soon. Otherwise, says Jimmy, it wouldn’t be so special.
“To me,” Eddie Russell says, “making the best bourbon is finally, after years, understanding what Jimmy meant. I think it boils down to staying to your roots and not changing just because there’s a new fad ... sticking with what you were taught to do, the right way.”
Staying true and keeping with tradition.
For decades.
Email John Trump at halfwaysouth@gmail.com. Look for his book, “Still & Barrel: Craft Spirits in the Old North State” (John F. Blair, Publisher) this coming spring.