The first bottle of Wild Turkey Bourbon was filled in 1940 in the center of Kentucky’s Bluegrass region. His call came after a group of friends tried an earlier edition of spirits to check out the 101st of a wild turkey hunt and enjoyed it. Bourbon temporarily spread beyond Kentucky when drinkers fell in love with its physically powerful flavor. Soon after, in 1954, Kentucky local Jimmy Russell began running at the distillery, learning the craft of making bourbon from master distiller Bill Hughes. There has been a Russell concerned about making whiskey ever since.
In 1967, he became the third master distiller and was inducted into the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame in 2000.
Known as the “Buddha of Bourbon,” Jimmy still roams the distillery, but is next to his son Eddie Russell, a master distiller and Hall of Famer. This living repository of wisdom has helped keep Wild Turkey at the forefront of the bourbon drinkers’ mentality.
Sensing wisely what they have in the father-son duo, Wild Turkey’s owners, Campari Group, have given them carte blanche to create a diversity of limited-release bourbons in recent years in their Master’s Keep series. The bottles sell for several hundred dollars at retail and can succeed in 4 figures in the resale market. His most recent release is Master’s Keep Unforgotten, a tribute to a pointed out mistake made years ago that sells for $200.
We caught up with Eddie in New York, where he sells his newest creation, to ask him a few questions about the bourbon industry, his celebrated family’s long haul, and what he likes to drink.
Today, each and every bourbon manufacturer launches new and exciting products. What motivates this change?
For a long time, everyone necessarily had a product; There were no special versions and so on. There was no explanation for why to expand. Key consumers were older Southern lords who drank bourbon and kept major distillers in business. It was the bourbon boom in Japan in the 90s that replaced everything. This opened your eyes to the odds of bottling something different. Elmer T Lee released a single-barrel bourbon, Jimmy released a barrel-resistant bourbon called Rare Breed, and other distillers began experimenting. Although most of them, including my father, were not in a position to grow up.
It was when the network of young mixologists emerged and began turning to old old cocktails, many of which were bourbon-based, that the industry changed completely. They clamored for new and attractive bourbons, and their enthusiasm spread to an entire generation of drinkers. Over 21 to 40 years. I think it’s great to see how things have changed, and there’s that power in the bourbon space.
You are the driving force behind the Master’s Keep series, where you push the barriers of what is expected of Wild Turkey. What led you to this idea?
Jimmy did some limited releases at the time, and when I became a master distiller, I looked to get that back, so I did. That’s what the Master’s Keep series is all about. The first called 17 years, and it’s the most exclusive whiskey we’ve ever had. It had aged in brick tanks, unlike our normal rickhouses which are covered in steel and are much more susceptible to temperature changes, making it a very sweet and consistent whiskey. People were gobbling it up, so I said let’s do anything else with the next release, and we’ve laughed ever since.
My son is the rye man of the family, so it was he who pushed me to experiment more with rye whiskey on the show. We bypassed rye, aged it at nine and 11 years old, and pulled out a cold unfiltered barrel evidence called Cornerstone. . It’s too good. That led to this year’s Unforgotten, a blend of bourbon and rye whiskey that has a fun story.
I’ve heard of this story. Can you tell me about it?
In 2009, one of my workers accidentally put rye in bourbon, and Jimmy was not satisfied at all. He tried to say goodbye to both of us. You see, back then we were only rye two days a year, and we had just wasted six months of our liquid in one go. I told him to calm down and see what happened to the mistake. So, I used that idea, but this time it’s another kind of whiskey. Where Forgiven has a very comfortable forehead and all the rye was on the back, this whiskey uses bourbon to circulate the edges of the rye.
It is made from a blend of 13-year-old bourbon and eight- and nine-year-old rye finished in rye barrels. It takes the raw spicy flavor of black rye pepper and softens it with notes of sweet vanilla bourbon. This one has 105 tests, and I’m already working on the next edition of this style. It takes me between 12 and 18 months to make the next access to Master’s Dungeon. I need to make sure we honor the cultural roots of Wild Turkey. while looking at other things than what I did in the past.
What does Jimmy think of all these developments?
When Jimmy, Booker, Elmer and all the guys drank bourbon, they wanted to know it was bourbon as soon as they put it in their mouths. You know, I’ve made fun of those guys. They would make that big head when they had a drink and say, Oh, that’s good. That was the case, but now I try to produce products where drinkers can taste creaminess, vanilla, caramel, sweetness, fruitiness, hazelnut. or any other product we offer. So it’s definitely a different profile than it was then.
My main goal is to highlight other flavor profiles. I mean, take a look at Longbranch, our task in collaboration with Matthew McConaughey. It’s probably as far from wild turkey’s DNA as you can imagine because of its sweetness, sweetness, and ease of drinking. You know, Jimmy doesn’t drink any of this, yet many consumers are looking for this kind of flavor profile.
Master distiller Eddie Russell progresses a barrel of Wild Turkey.
What’s in it for the Russell family and Wild Turkey?
My son Bruce has been here in Kentucky for 3 or 4 years after spending several years in Texas as a logo ambassador. I concentrate more with him on the mixing part, the tasting part. It has become a common theme in our industry. He is more of a master taster or a master blender than a master distiller. Because if you look at Fred Noe, Craig Beam and me, we’ll probably be the last to start shooting barrels, emptying bottles, stacking boxes and mowing the lawn. . My niece Joanne is in New York, works as a logo ambassador and loves it. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to move her to Kentucky to work at the distillery.
Last consultation for you. What do you drink if they don’t have one of your bottles?
I have wild turkey in my blood and, in fact, I’m not going to run out of it. If I’m traveling and they don’t have wild turkey, I’ll have a cocktail with someone else’s bourbon. I’ll drink some tequila or wine, but never Jack Daniels; No self-respecting Kentuckian would do that. That’s fun; I heard other people do this query to my dad for years, and he said he would have Elmer T Lee if Wild Turkey wasn’t available. The only explanation for why he said this was that Elmer T was his smart friend. I never saw him drink a bottle of it. He was just nice.