The name Russell, like Beam, Noe, and Lee, means “bourbon.” Specifically, it means Wild Turkey bourbon, as Master Distiller Eddie Russell, and his dad, the bourbon giant that is Jimmy Russell, have made it their lives’ work. The family tradition runs like a limestone-rich stream through the years, from Jimmy’s small batch bourbon to Eddie’s rich ryes.
Wild Turkey’s currently owned by the Campari Group, but it started as part of the late 19th century trend in Kentucky and Tennessee of grocers making their own spirits to sell. The Ripy brothers, from County Tyrone in Ireland, commenced to be Kentucky grocers in 1869 – which led to a distillery. Soon they were selling well past the state borders. A merger with another Kentucky grocery firm, Austin Nichols, kept the distillery afloat selling “medicinal spirits” during Prohibition, and by the Roosevelt administration Austin Nichols owned the distillery and the focus moved away from foodstuffs, straight toward the renewed whiskey market.
Though the product line is greatly expanded, they still make the original Wild Turkey Bourbon with the 1940 recipe, kept in place as a young man named Jimmy Russell took a job there in 1954. He rose to be a master, studying with the second of its master distillers, Bill Hughes, and with Ernest Ripy, Jr. Eddie came on board in 1981, likewise at the bottom of the ladder, and worked his way up.
Eddie says he was lucky to grow up among the greats – not only Jimmy, but Booker Noe, Elmer T. Lee. “I never understood why Jimmy was so happy when I decided to stay on,” he says. “But now that my own oldest son’s here – he’s a brand ambassador for us – I get it now. This is not just a job.”
He’s still learning 35 years later.
If you visit Wild Turkey, you’ll experience the recent $70-plus million update to the visitor’s center, but Eddie says the most important part is that they keep everything out in the open – there’s nothing hidden about the process that makes Wild Turkey. “It’s all out there,” says Eddie decisively. “This is not Disney.” If you’re lucky, you’ll meet up with Jimmy Russell, but you’ll never find a dark secret behind a curtain. This is honest whiskey.
Eddie, meanwhile, has dedicated the past couple of years to studying what’s going on in the world – not only with the consumer, but with bartenders and mixologists –wholly aware that a remarkable cocktail sells bottles of bourbon later. His focus of late? Making those mixologists a truly great rye. Or a few.
“I went to Jimmy in ’08 or ’09 and said we needed more rye, I saw the trend coming,” he says. “Our 101 Rye has been a staple for years, last fall we released a single barrel rye at 104 proof.”
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Look for more of that – good, solid, tradition-based, high character spirits – from Wild Turkey going forward. While they did get on top of the flavored whiskey trend when they rebranded American Honey in 2006 to great fanfare, Russell doesn’t foresee much more of that. The Russell family defined the distillery’s role as utter masters of traditional bourbon, made with the best of ingredients.
That’s a legacy.
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