WILD TURKEY KENTUCKY SPIRIT
Barrel #0313, Warehouse CNA, Rick 2, bottled on March 1, 2023MASH BILL – 75% corn, 13% rye, 12% malted barley
PROOF – 101
AGE – NAS (~9 years)
DISTILLERY – Wild Turkey
PRICE – $65
WORTH BUYING? – For the first half of the bottle I was a No, but then…
Uncorked and tasted in The Year of No Buying (The what? 🔗 here.)
The last bottle of Wild Turkey Kentucky Spirit I had was from 2014, though I uncorked and enjoyed it in 2020. This was the old turkey-tail shaped bottling, kitchy but more fun than the current elegantly modern bottle. But that’s just presentation. And though presentation counts for something, the bourbon inside is ultimately what matters.
I’d uncorked that 2014 bottle for Thanksgiving. Sipped alongside the turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, it was superb. The cherry notes were particularly strong, along with a prominent note of that satisfying dusty oak that Wild Turkey often offers. I noticed both notes right up front in the aroma, and they continued to dominate through the taste and into the finish. Tasted again a few days later, on its own without the Thanksgiving meal to mingle with the experience, the bourbon came across as slightly less sweet, the cherry notes deemphasized in favor of drier oak and pastry notes. Still an excellent bourbon.
In the past handful of years since I enjoyed that 2014 bottle, interest in Wild Turkey has exploded. The distillery’s parent company, Campari, has gotten wise to the secondary market and now puts the limited edition products out with an msrp pitched at what had been secondary prices. In the short term, this has upped secondary pricing even further. In the longterm, we’ll see whether retailers eventually find their allotments gathering dust—like the high-end Wild Turkeys used to do not too many years ago. The Bourbon Boom’s evident leak hints at impending shifts to the supply and demand ratio, as all drinkers face an ever-widening expanse of options, and those who go for limited editions grow ever wearier of annual price hikes.
In any event, after four years I thought it time to give Kentucky Spirit another go. When I uncorked this bottle I found it to be decidedly dry. The aroma and taste conjured long-dead oak logs, greyed over time by an arid climate, with not a whiff of fruit or candy sweetness. Several pours in over a few weeks, this desolate dryness hadn’t changed and I was about ready to write the bottle off…
But then one night I tried a pour after having primed my palate with some rather pungent rye and single malt whiskeys. Whether due to the warm up or the Kentucky Spirit’s own airing out, a thick wave of classic Wild Turkey cherry washed over my palate. Hope was renewed!
So here we are, nearing a month after uncorking and just over halfway through the bottle. I’ve warmed up my palate with a bit of Elijah Craig to better ensure success. These brief notes were taken using both a simple brandy glass and traditional Glencairn.
COLOR – medium autumn oranges
NOSE – sweet dry oak up front, backed up by subtler caramel and baked cherry
TASTE – same notes as the nose, only now the caramel is the first wave, followed closely by the cherry and oak
FINISH – cherry, caramel and oak in perfect balance up front, then as they linger the oak gradually moves forward a bit without fully taking over
OVERALL – it took half a bottle but now this bourbon is offering a classic Wild Turkey trifecta I love: oak, caramel and cherry
The bourbon is a bit more relaxed in the simply brandy glass, and a bit pushy in the Glencairn. But in both glasses it’s a solid Kentucky bourbon, offering a nice balance of what I hope for in such a pour.
That it took half a bottle to get there is a bummer. Were I less patient, or had I less of a history with Wild Turkey to compel me to keep trying, I can imagine I might have written the Kentucky Spirit line off as too dry and simplistic for my tastes. And while I wouldn’t say it’s now unusually complex, that balance of dry oak, bright sweet caramel and darker baked cherry creates enough interest to keep me happily sipping. Now it’s a bottle I could accidentally go through too much of in one sitting!
Kentucky Spirit is a single barrel offering, essentially the single barrel version of Wild Turkey 101—same bourbon bottled at the same proof. As such it’s going to be different from batch to batch. My current bottle is from Camp Nelson warehouse A. As I noted above, the Camp Nelson warehouses have been getting a lot of talk recently due to the $300 Russell’s Reserve “Single Rickhouse” releases Wild Turkey has put out lately, naming Camp Nelson’s warehouse C in 2022 and and F in 2023. A high price placed on a specific warehouse is a great marketing trick, conjuring specificity and scarcity. And putting out Kentucky Spirit releases from other Camp Nelson warehouses in the wake of these high-priced offerings is a smart marketing follow-up.
But the careful whiskey fan should be very wary of marketing departments. I’ve not tried the Single Rickhouse offerings. I have zero doubt they’re good. But I’ve had enough Russell’s Reserve single barrels, and these similar Kentucky Spirit releases, to know that the price gap makes no consumer sense. The more common single barrel releases may have the wild card aspect working against them, and the curated nature of the Single Rickhouse may have the better odds offered by careful blending. But the quality of Wild Turkey in any iteration is good enough that I’m content to play the quarter slot machines while others empty their deeper pockets at the poker tables.
Cheers!
The Right Spirit 