Wild Turkey's Just Dropped the Perfect Bourbon Blend for Surprisingly Cheap
The traditional gift for a 70th anniversary is platinum, and it’s hard to think of a more appropriate way to describe the newest Wild Turkey whiskey gifted to bourbon lovers on the 70th anniversary of master distiller Jimmy Russell’s first day at the distillery.
Russell’s 70th Anniversary Bourbon is a uniquely personal limited edition blend of Jimmy's favorite whiskeys—a marriage of barrel lots from his favorite warehouses tailored to his specific tastes. And this fall, for around $50 a bottle, we can all get a taste of Jimmy Russell’s perfect bourbon.
Russell, who will turn 90 in November, set foot in Wild Turkey’s distillery on September 10, 1954, and from day one he’s been a steward of some of the best bourbon whiskey coming out of Kentucky.
To mark his 70th year on whiskey watch, the blending team at Wild Turkey mingled Russell’s signature 101-proof bourbon with hand-selected batches of eight-to-nine-year bourbon lots cherry-picked from Jimmy’s favorite corners and honey holes in his preferred rickhouses.
Tasting notes from the distillery put the flavor profile somewhere between Russell’s Reserve and Wild Turkey 101, which is to be expected, since in many ways that’s exactly what this whiskey is.
According to Wild Turkey, the bourbon offers “rich aromas of oak, honey, cinnamon and tobacco.” Flavors are “marked by sweet cream, butterscotch and black tea notes that transition to bitter chocolate, dark cherry and burnt sugar.”
Russell famously started in the distillery at 18 with a broom and a dust pan. He rode out the near-collapse of the bourbon industry through the 1970s and 1980s, and refused to embrace the so-called “light whiskey” trend of those years that saw bourbon diluted with vodka-like neutral grain spirits. His predecessor Bill Hughes once remarked that Jimmy "didn't change a damn thing."
Danny Clinch
Russell and his bourbon survived to the renaissance, where both continue to receive long-deserved accolades as he extends his distinction as longest actively serving master distiller in the whiskey world.
The only critique that could possibly be leveled at this limited edition would be for the name. Wild Turkey Jimmy Russell's 70th Anniversary 8-Year-Old Bourbon is quite a long moniker, even for the often-verbose world of whiskey.
It’s hard to pick a phrase to cut out of this name, and yet it’s also easy to do away with so many of them. After all, Russell’s name is deeply interwoven into the tapestry of bourbon, and any modern liquid bearing the Wild Turkey name is here by the labor and guidance of Jimmy.
There is no Wild Turkey without Jimmy Russell. Jimmy’s DNA is in the Wild Turkey distillery, both literally and metaphorically—both his son Eddie (who shares the master distiller title with his father) and his grandson Bruce (now an associate blender) work at Wild Turkey.
In a statement, Bruce Russell explained that it’s hard to put his grandfather’s impact on the industry into words. Making a great whiskey with his favorites? Not so hard.
“I can't think of a more fitting way to mark this milestone," said Bruce. "We chose a special blend of choice whiskies from a few of his favorite rickhouses, and at 101 proof, it's meant to be just what he loves most about bourbon. We can't wait for fans around the world to enjoy it, and in the words of Granddad himself—if you don't like it, he'll drink it."