The small batch label for the iconic Wild Turkey distillery has released one of this year’s stand-out bourbons

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Food + Drink

Tasting Russell’s Reserve 15-Year-Old Limited Release Bourbon

The small batch label for the iconic Wild Turkey distillery has released one of this year’s stand-out bourbons

Clay Dillow

5 July 2024

When Wild Turkey master distiller Eddie Russell began crafting the first extremely small batch bourbon whiskey for release under the distillery’s new Russell’s Reserve label back in 1998, he did so with the expectation that the barrels he’d set aside wouldn’t sit in the warehouse very long. Jimmy Russell— Eddie’s father and longtime master distiller at Wild Turkey—was approaching his 45th year in the business, and Eddie thought these special, hand-selected casks would make for a commemorative whiskey to mark Jimmy’s retirement.

A full 15 years later Jimmy Russell still hadn’t retired (and remains co-master distiller at Wild Turkey alongside Eddie), and in 2015 the younger Russell had to go ahead and bottle his would-be celebratory bourbon before the flavor profile became too oaky. Roughly 2,000 bottles of that 15-year-old “Russell’s Reserve 1998” entered circulation, and it remains one of the most coveted bottles Wild Turkey has ever produced. So it’s no stretch to assume the newly released Russell’s Reserve 15-Year-Old 2024 Limited Release will prove one of the year’s most sought-after whiskeys for drinkers and collectors alike.

Russell’s Reserve is Wild Turkey’s small batch imprint, and while it may have originated as an homage to Jimmy Russell, it’s very much Eddie Russell’s whiskey. With more than seven decades shepherding Wild Turkey’s classic flavor profile under his belt, Jimmy’s tastes lean toward bolder, spicier and younger bourbons. Eddie—himself a bourbon legend on his own merits—created Russell’s Reserve to explore what extended maturation and highly judicious barrel selection can coax from Wild Turkey’s distillate. Eddie’s son Bruce, associate blender for Wild Turkey, also weighs in on the Russell’s Reserve lineup.

That roster includes a 10-year-old bourbon and a six-year-old rye, both of which retail around a very reasonable $50. It also includes some single-barrel offerings that clock in at slightly higher price points. But while Russell’s Reserve is technically Wild Turkey’s small batch label, the whiskeys it puts out are not designed to feed the ongoing (and often maddening) bourbon whiskey hype cycle. Still, Wild Turkey remains an icon among Kentucky bourbon producers, and bourbon enthusiasts tend to froth over some of Russell’s Reserve’s more limited and allocated offerings.

One of those is Russell’s Reserve 13-Year-Old, an annual-ish limited release whose inaugural bottling in 2021 netted both immediate acclaim and sky-high prices on the secondary market. There was no real external impetus for crafting a 13-year-old bourbon under the Russell’s Reserve label, Eddie says, other than the fact that he was already blending some of that older liquid into the 10-year-old (age statements on whiskey bottles denote the age of the youngest liquid in the blend), and the 13-year-old (and older) components tasted really good all on their own at barrel proof. Moreover, the 13-year-old bourbon fit the flavor profile that Eddie has worked hard to cultivate for Russell’s Reserve, with discernible fruit and some soft sweetness balancing the forward oak and spiciness inherent in Wild Turkey whiskeys. 

Russell’s Reserve 13-Year-Old proved an instant hit, one that might become an annual release if Eddie ever had enough long-aged bourbon in Wild Turkey’s rickhouses to commit to bottling it at regular intervals. Thus far he’s managed to put out extremely limited quantities of the 13-year-old in each year since 2021. But there won’t be a Russell’s Reserve 13 in 2024, as Eddie had to tap the best of his limited reserves of older aged bourbon to produce this year’s 15-year-old release.

The barrels used in that blend all matured at Wild Turkey’s Camp Nelson campus, a cluster of warehouses situated on a bend in the Kentucky River adjacent to a Civil War-era US Army camp (now a national monument and cemetery) some 30 miles from Wild Turkey’s distillery and primary warehouse complex. 

“Camp Nelson has been bringing some of our best whiskies for probably the last six or seven years,” Eddie says. “It sits out in the open, and one of [the warehouses] sits right on a cliff by the river.” That proximity to the river provides some degree of temperature moderation (there’s a reason many of the world’s great wine regions follow the meanderings of climate-tempering river systems), creating a microclimate that differs from that found at the distillery’s main campus.

While those differences may be subtle from a climatological standpoint, they’re pronounced in the bottle. Russell’s Reserve 15-Year-Old differentiates itself from its 13-year-old brethren first and foremost via its color, which Bruce Russell describes as akin to “motor oil” (though a more accurate and appetizing comparison might be to an oloroso or even a cream sherry). It’s quite dark for a bourbon, in other words, offering up aromas of dried fruits, nutmeg and caramel on the nose with some fresher fruits—especially a beautiful black cherry note up front—alongside peach, coffee, tobacco, dried apricot and old oak on the palate. Though bottled at a warm 117.2 proof (58.6% ABV), the sumptuousness of this bourbon masks a lot of that heat, making for an extraordinary sipping experience.

While we’ll very likely see the 13-year-old Russell’s Reserve again—perhaps as soon as next year—don’t expect to see a repeat of this year’s Russell’s Reserve 15 anytime soon. “We thought maybe we could do this every two or three years,” he says. “But after we dumped it [from the barrels] we realized—and I should’ve already known—that from barrels that were originally 53 gallons we wound up getting about 17 gallons per barrel.” Evaporation—known as “angel’s share” in distillery lingo—is a real problem in Kentucky, where fluctuating humidity during hot summers and cold winters can cause a significant amount of whiskey aging inside a barrel to vaporize. That’s just one reason bottles like Russell’s Reserve 15-Year-Old are so few and far between and, in this case, unlikely to make an encore appearance. “Hopefully down the road we can get some more 15-year-old, but it’s hard to save barrels back that long,” Eddie says. “For now, this is a one-time deal.”