RUSSELL’S RESERVE 1998 KENTUCKY STRAIGHT BOURBON WHISKEY

A delicious and respectable throwback to Wild Turkey’s heydays and hopefully a sign of things to come. The Russell’s Reserve 1998 release is an extremely limited run of just 2,070 bottles. This makes it one of the smallest limited releases from a major Kentucky distillery in some time. According to Wild Turkey’s press release, this bourbon was initially distilled and set aside to celebrate a future milestone for Jimmy Russell, but since this bourbon reached its peak of maturity, Jimmy’s son, Eddie Russell needed to dump the barrels or risk “less desirable flavors [taking] over.”

With only 23 barrels of bourbon bottled, it’s the smallest batch ever released under Jimmy and Eddie’s watch. According to Josh Peters of The Whiskey Jug, Eddie told him that while he was checking on these barrels he noticed that they were evaporating a lot faster than expected. After pulling samples and checking with his dad, they dumped the barrels into a steel holding tank towards the end of 2014, making this officially a 15-year-old bourbon (due to distillation date).