Wild Turkey 101 – from 2001!

WILD TURKEY 101
2001 1L bottling

MASH BILL – 75% corn, 13% rye, 12% malted barley

PROOF – 101

AGE – NAS

DISTILLERY – Wild Turkey

PRICE – $56 (in trade, actually, for a bottle of Weller Antique 107 I’d bought for this amount)

WORTH BUYING? – Heck yeah!

Uncorked and tasted in The Year of No Buying (The what? 🔗 here.)

I picked up this bottle back in 2018. In addition to two 1L bottles of 2001 Wild Turkey 101, over the course of that year I also came into several bottles of 2006 Wild Turkey 101. Thanks to David Jennings’ blog, Rare Bird 101, which provides insights into Wild Turkey’s often changing laser codes, one can fairly easily determine the bottling date of most any release.

I went through the first of my 2001 bottles pretty quickly, enjoying its butterscotch bomb impact thoroughly. I squirreled this second bottle away, and over the years slowly sipped through the 2006 bottles, now all sadly gone. In my current Year of No Buying I’ve been opening up what rarities I have with greater abandon, and it’s a pleasure to revisit this one.

Having been bottled in 2001, the whiskey in this batch was likely distilled in the early-to-mid 1990s, when Wild Turkey’s standard entry proof was still 107. In 2004 the entry proof was raised to 110, and in 2006 raised again to 115, where it has remained since. A lower entry proof means the final bottled product needs less water to bring it down to its bottling proof, which in turn means the bourbon’s flavors and aromas are less diluted. A higher entry proof saves money, given it will need to be watered down more at bottling, increasing the volume yielded per barrel but further diluting flavor. Wild Turkey’s master distilling duo, Jimmy and Eddie Russell, took their time shifting their whiskey’s entry proof, to ensure flavor integrity was not sacrificed to financial concerns. That’s just one reason why we like them!

There is a lot more that could be said on the subject of “dusty” Wild Turkey, as well as the brand’s rise from longtime bottom-shelf stalwart to Best Openly Kept Secret in Bourbon, and from there to latest victim of FOMO and new resident of the unicorn pasture. High-end Wild Turkey releases that used to sit on shelves collecting dust are now sold at msrp’s they didn’t even go for on the secondary market just a few years ago. (I’m lookin’ at you Russell’s 13 and Master’s Keep series.)

But quite a lot on all that has already been written—especially by Jennings on Rare Bird 101, easily the best online Wild Turkey database in existence. So let’s get to the whiskey.

Here we are, two weeks after uncorking and five pours into the bottle. These brief notes were taken using a simple brandy glass, which I’ve found shows off Wild Turkey best.

COLOR – those classic pale but vibrant Wild Turkey oranges

NOSE – dusty and dry sweet oak, cherry, caramel, vanilla, rustic autumnal baking spices

TASTE – sweet oak and mildly bitter oak tannin, the cherry note now tart and submerged in caramel

FINISH – a burst of rye and baking spice on swallowing, then oak, oak tannin, with faint lingering cherry and caramel, and an even fainter WT funk note…

OVERALL – rustic bourbon joy

Though not the butterscotch bomb I vividly remember my previous 2001 bottle to be, this vatting is much more centered in classic Wild Turkey 101 flavors. It’s quite the cousin to the Wild Turkey Distiller’s Reserve 12 Year I’ve recently been enjoying. This 2001 bottle tastes younger, less refined and complex, and more rambunctious by comparison. But the family lineage is immediately recognizable.

To my surprise, there is very little Wild Turkey “funk” to this bottle—that meaty, moldy note that can actually add quite positively to the experience when balanced by the oak and fruit notes. The 2013 accident turned special release, Wild Turkey Forgiven, went more than a bit overboard on that funk for me, though I eventually came around to it. But here I only pick up on it very faintly if I really dig, especially on the finish.

To be clear, this lack is not a minus. This bottle is all plus all the time. It’s solid, slam your glass on the table when done bourbon—rough, rustic, sweet, savory. Too tannic or oaky for some? Sure. This is no smooth ride, more of a fun and bumpy unpaved backroad. I’d love to sip it out in the countryside of my hometown, Placerville, in the foothills of the California Sierra Nevadas. Rural roads abound there, with thick unruly pine and oak forests clogged with manzanita and wild flowers. Then comes a cascading river or gurgling stream. And plenty of wild turkeys! A perfect setting for a bourbon like this one.

I’ll never pay secondary prices for these old Wild Turkey bottom-shelfers. Contemporary Wild Turkey products are equally satisfying in their own ways. So this last vintage bottle from my bunker will be savored and shared with good old friends who appreciate time, history, and place.

Cheers!