An Interview With Master Distiller Eddie Russell Of Wild Turkey

The first bottle of the Wild Turkey Bourbon was filled in 1940 in the heart of the Bluegrass region of Kentucky. Its name came after a group of friends tasted an earlier version of the 101-proof spirits while on a wild turkey hunt and loved it. The bourbon quickly spread beyond Kentucky as drinkers fell for its robust flavor. Not long after, in 1954, Jimmy Russell, a Kentucky native, started working at the distillery learning the craft of making bourbon from Master distiller Bill Hughes. There has been a Russell involved with crafting the whiskey ever since.

By 1967 he became the third Master Distiller and was enshrined in the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame in 2000.

Known as the “Buddha of Bourbon,” Jimmy still roams the distillery, but it’s often alongside his son Eddie Russell, a Master Distiller and member of the Hall of Fame himself. This living repository of knowledge has helped keep Wild Turkey at the forefront of bourbon drinkers’ mindsets.

Wisely recognizing what they have in the father and son duo, the owners of Wild Turkey, the Campari Group, have given them a pretty free hand to craft a lineup of limited-release bourbons over the last few years in their Master’s Keep Series. The bottles sell for several hundred dollars at retail and can hit four digits on the resale market. Their latest release is the Master’s Keep Unforgotten, a homage to a famous mistake made years ago that retails for $200.

We caught up with Eddie in New York City, where he was promoting his latest creation to ask him a few questions about the bourbon business, what’s next for his famous family, and what he likes to drink.

Every bourbon maker these days is rolling out new and exciting products. What is driving this change?

For a long time, everybody basically had one product; there were no special releases and such. There was no reason to expand. The basic customers were older southern gentlemen who drank bourbon, and they kept the major distillers in business. It was the bourbon boom in Japan in the nineties that changed everything. It opened some eyes to the possibilities of bottling something different. Elmer T Lee released a single-barrel bourbon, Jimmy released a barrel-proof bourbon called Rare Breed, and other distillers started experimenting. Even though most of them, including my dad, were not really that big into expanding.

It was really when the young bartending community emerged and started looking towards old classic cocktails, many that were bourbon-based, that the entire industry shifted. They were calling for new and interesting bourbons, and their enthusiasm spread to a whole generation of 21-40-year-old drinkers. I think it’s really cool how things have changed, and there is this energy in the bourbon space.

You are the driving force behind the Master’s Keep Series, where you push the boundaries on what to expect from Wild Turkey. What led you to this idea?

Jimmy did a few limited releases back in the day, and when I became Master Distiller, I wanted to bring that back, so I did. That’s what the Master’s Keep Series is all about. The first one was called 17-year-old, and it was the most unique whiskey we ever had. It had been aged in brick warehouses, unlike our regular rickhouses that are metal clad and much more sensitive to temperature changes, so it was a very smooth and consistent whiskey. People gobbled it up, so I said let’s do something different with the next release, and we have been having fun ever since.

My son is the rye guy in the family, so he’s the one that pushed me to experiment more with rye whiskey in the series. We put back some rye, aged it to nine and eleven years old, and brought out a non-chill-filtered barrel proof called Cornerstone. It was so good. That led to this year’s Unforgotten, a mix of bourbon and rye whiskeys that has a funny backstory.

I have heard about that backstory. Can you tell me about it?

In 2009 one of my employees accidentally put rye on top of bourbon, and Jimmy wasn’t happy at all. He wanted to fire both of us. See, back then, we only made rye two days a year, and we had just wasted six months of our liquid in one fell swoop. I told him to take it easy and see what came from the mistake. It tasted great, so we decided to do a limited release and called it Forgiven. So, I used that idea, but it’s a different type of whiskey this time. Where the Forgiven has a very sweet front to it, and all the rye was on the back end, this whiskey uses bourbon to round off the edges of the rye.

It’s made from a blend of 13-year-old bourbon with eight and nine-year-old rye finished in rye casks. It takes the raw spiciness of the black pepper flavors of the rye and mellows it out with sweet vanilla hints from the bourbon. This one is at 105 proof, and I am already working on the next version of this style. It takes about 12 to 18 months for me to make the next entry into the Master’s Keep. I want to ensure that we honor Wild Turkey’s roots in tradition while trying things that are different from what we have done in the past.

What does Jimmy think about all of these new releases?

When Jimmy, Booker, Elmer, and all those guys drank bourbon, they wanted to know it was bourbon as soon as it hit their mouths. You know, I always teased those guys. They’d make this big face when they take a drink and go, Oh, that’s good. It was, but now I’m trying to produce products where drinkers can taste the creaminess, vanilla, caramel, sweetness, fruity, nutty, or whatever product we’re putting out there. So, it’s definitely a different profile than back in the day.

My main goal is to bring out different taste profiles. I mean, look at Longbranch, our collaboration project with Matthew McConaughey. It’s probably as far away from the Wild Turkey DNAs as you can get for how smooth, soft, and easy to drink it is. You know, Jimmy’s not drinking any of that, but many consumers out there are looking for that type of taste profile.

What’s next for the Russell family and Wild Turkey?

My son Bruce has been here in Kentucky for the last three or four years after spending several years in Texas as a brand ambassador. I’m really focusing on with him more on the blending part of it, the tasting part of it. That’s become a more common theme in our industry. It’s more of a master taster or master blender than a master distiller. Because if you look at Fred Noe, Craig Beam, and me, we’re probably the last ones that started out rolling barrels, dumping bottles, stacking cases, and mowing grass. My niece Joanne is in New York, working as a brand ambassador and loving it. I don’t know if we will ever get her to move to Kentucky to work at the distillery.

Last question for you. You are on the road a lot. What do you drink if they don’t have one of your bottles?

I’ve got Wild Turkey in my blood, and I’m sure not going to run out of it. If I am out traveling and they don’t have Wild Turkey, I will drink a cocktail with somebody else’s bourbon. I have tried them all. I’ll drink a little tequila or wine, but never any Jack Daniels; no self-respecting Kentuckian would ever do that. It’s funny; I have heard people ask my dad that question for years, and he would always say he would have some Elmer T Lee if Wild Turkey weren’t available. The only reason he would say that was Elmer T was his good buddy. I have never seen him actually drink a bottle of it. He was just being nice.