Wild Turkey Master’s Keep Decades

WILD TURKEY MASTER’S KEEP DECADES
Batch 0001 (2017)

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

PROOF – 104

AGE – blend of 10 to 20 year bourbons

DISTILLERY – Wild Turkey

PRICE – $146

WORTH BUYING? – Oh yes!

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

I went through a bottle of this back in 2017 when it came out. In my notes on it then, I quibbled over the price-to-experience ratio—which is laughable now, the way things have gone with Wild Turkey limited release pricing. But I did pick up another bottle, and it’s been sitting in my bunker ever since, awaiting just the right occasion.

For a recent gathering of longtime friends, debating what whiskey I should bring, I thought about how if each of us there added up the number of years we’ve known each other and combined them all it would amount to many many decades. The choice of this bottle was easy. Indeed, my friends agreed this was a special bourbon. And of course any bourbon is at its best when shared with friends.

BTW: You’ll notice up top that I specified this is Batch 0001. That might seem obvious, as the Master’s Keep is a singular annual release. However, in this instance, there was indeed a Batch 0002. That the first batch was already numbered would suggest it was known a second was coming. Are they different? According to David Jennings of Rare Bird 101, who asked Wild Turkey master distiller Eddie Russell directly, while Batch 0001 is comprised entirely of barrels from Wild Turkey’s weathered McBrayer warehouses, the second batch involves some number of barrels from other warehouses as well.

I’ll leave any further rabbit holing on what that might mean to Jennings—and if you’re interested I do highly recommend his website. It’s the single greatest trove of Wild Turkey minutia on the www or anywhere.

Meanwhile, let’s get into a glass of this stuff.

Here we are, nearing four weeks after uncorking and about a third of the way into the bottle. These brief notes were taken using both a simple brandy glass and traditional Glencairn.

COLOR – very drippy and clingy to the glass, with that beautifully relaxed Wild Turkey autumn orange

NOSE – dusty oak and baked cherry right up front, then caramel and vanilla, a light dusting of cinnamon baking spices, homemade graham cracker, altogether very comforting

TASTE – sweet, oaky, with the cherry and caramel in perfect balance, a nice outline of bitter oak tannin

FINISH – layers of oak from dusty to sweet to tannic, some caramel and now also fudgy chocolate

OVERALL – classic, richly layered Wild Turkey emphasizing what oak can offer a bourbon

This is good Wild Turkey, hitting all the notes I expect and love. And as an oak fan I appreciate that emphasis, though I could understand someone less oak-inclined finding this too tannic or bitter. It’s on the edge for even me. But I enjoy lingering on a worthwhile edge—it can be provocative and freeing at once.

No doubt if one were to spot a miraculously derelict bottle of Decades on a shelf anywhere today, the price would be jacked up to the sky. I wouldn’t pay it. At the original ~$125 or even $150, I’d certainly pause to consider it. That price would be half what comparable contemporary Wild Turkey experiences are now going for as I write this—who knows what the prices will be at the time you’re reading this.

But that’s always been the conundrum for me with Wild Turkey. All of their products are so good, the higher the price rises for the limited releases the less value they have for me as a tasting experience. A great Russell’s Reserve SiB for $100 could fill the role of this 2017 Decades easily. They’d be different, yes. But as a sum-total experience, the qualities would be comparable.

I wonder if—and I’ll admit I also hope that—Wild Turkey’s parent company, Campari, has poked a significant hole in the whiskey bubble’s already apparent leak with their recent price hikes. I know of shops in my area with $300 and $400 Russell’s Reserve Single Rickhouse releases that have sat on the shelf since being placed there. The latest Master’s Keep release is right next to them. Plenty of other bottles of both these offerings have sold, of course. But is the bourbon glut upon us? I do think so and I do hope so, assuming it means whiskey fans will start encountering regular rando offerings of well-aged, well-made whiskeys at better prices than 2024 is yet willing to offer. I’ve assumed, for example, that the days of the glorious 15+ year Knob Creek SiBs for $55 are over. But are they? After a couple years of matching current secondary pricing, will the corporate parents of classic Kentucky distilleries allow some excellent older whiskeys out of the vault again, to move stagnant stock?

Time will tell. Meanwhile, I have this lovely bottle of expertly blended Wild Turkey bourbon on hand to enjoy and to share.

Cheers!