Bourbon News

Premium bourbons make spirited gifts for the holidays

RELATED STORIES 50 years in the bourbon business

Since most of the world's bourbon is made in Kentucky, a special bottle makes a great gift for someone who appreciates fine spirits. Most distilleries bottle premium small batch and single barrel bourbons - meant to be sipped and savored - much like scotch and cognac.

Here are a few bourbon selections. Note that prices may vary and some may be available only in Kentucky.

Russell's Reserve ($25): Wild Turkey master distiller Jimmy Russell and his son, Eddie, select this 10-year-old bourbon from the best barrels.

A.H. Hirsch 16-Year-Old Pot Stilled Bourbon ($60): This bourbon is the last batch made in Pennsylvania, but it's owned and bottled by a Kentucky company.

Eagle Rare 17-Year-Old Kentucky Straight Bourbon ($45): A relative bargain for such a smooth and drinkable spirit.

Evan Williams Single Barrel Bourbon ($23): Selected by Heaven Hill master distiller Parker Beam, the only vintage (10-year-old) bourbon sold.

Four Roses Single Barrel Bourbon ($32): Introduced in September, this premium whiskey is available only in Kentucky and Indiana.

Chuck Martin

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50 years in the bourbon business Master distiller Jimmy Russell has seen - and tasted - a lot from his Wild Turkey perch above the Kentucky River

By Chuck Martin Enquirer staff writer

LAWRENCEBURG, Ky. - Jimmy Russell is feeling a little unsettled.

Except for the rumble of steam pipes overhead, his Wild Turkey distillery, perched precariously above the Kentucky River west of Lexington, is quiet on this December afternoon.

More than three months ago, Russell's crew stopped production in order to move the three-story continuous still - a narrow tangle of pipes that turns alcoholic vapor into whiskey - to a new building next door.

Everything's going according to plan - the move should soon be complete and production will resume before the end of the year. It's just that, when you've been making bourbon most of your life, as Russell has - and then you're not - it's unsettling.

"If you're in the makin'," he says, leaning over one of the 26 empty

15,500-gallon stainless-steel fermentation tanks, "you don't feel like you're doing anything unless these are full."

No doubt, Russell will get through it. Approaching the end of his 50th year at Wild Turkey, having just turned 70, the master distiller has seen and survived it all, including mechanical shutdowns, a corporate takeover, a tornado or two and a horrific warehouse fire four years ago that destroyed thousands of barrels of whiskey.

More than that, his half-century of experience has helped make Wild Turkey one of the best and most well-known bourbons in the world.

Considering the company produces a handful of whiskeys in similar fashion, you might think the distillery could run on autopilot. Just plug in the formula, and go. When Russell hears this proposition, a big grin spreads over his face.

"There are funny things in this business you can't get out of a book," he says.

Russell, 6-foot-1 and barrel-chested, with a trained nose that fits snugly into a snifter, possesses a rare whiskey-making intuition. He can sample the raw spirit as it drips from the still - when it's clear and tastes like the essence of corn - and predict what it will taste like after the bourbon sleeps in wooden barrels for eight years. He probably knows more about bourbon than anyone else in the business, but Russell still aims to learn something new everyday.

"If you're not," he says, "you're not doing your job."

A man of moderation

You might expect the man who makes potent Wild Turkey to be somewhat of a hell-raiser, maybe sporting at least one tattoo. But that wouldn't be Jimmy Russell.

He sips his bourbon in moderation - straight when it's cold outside and with a few cubes of ice in the heat of summer. He's a deacon in his Baptist church and

adores his wife, Joretta. They've been married 52 years. When he's not making whiskey or traveling to Japan and Europe promoting it, he enjoys watching his grandsons play basketball and tending roses.

"Making bourbon is a lot like gardening," he says, ambling down a short street on the distillery grounds named Jimmy Russell Way, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his khakis. "You can't rush it. You can't put it in the ground and expect it to bloom tomorrow."

He is a good ol' boy who made good, having grown up only five miles from the distillery. In high school, he excelled in sports and did pretty well in chemistry, as he remembers.

Soon after graduation, he married Joretta and started at Wild Turkey, where his father worked 15 years in maintenance.

Russell doesn't remember much about his first day on the job as a

19-year-old at the distillery in September 1954 - except that he didn't mess up anything.

"I did a little bit of everything then," he says. "You might be checking grain as it came in. And a little later, you might find yourself shoveling it."

It was probably the perfect training for a future master distiller.

Russell worked his way up, always learning something new according to his creed, and was named master distiller in the late 1960s. He and Joretta raised two sons and a daughter. Their youngest, Eddie, followed his father into the business and has worked at Wild Turkey for 24 years.

"I didn't realize how respected he is in the business until I started working here," Eddie, maturation manager at Wild Turkey, says of his father.

Parker Beam, master distiller at competing Heaven Hill Distillery in Bardstown, says Russell is a hands-on distiller who doesn't compromise on quality and is loved by everyone.

"Every place Jim travels, you always hear good things about him," Beam says.

His even temper is one of his best attributes, says his wife.

"It takes a lot to rile him," Joretta says. "Until it gets to a point, then he lets his wishes be known."

Russell's sweet, gentle nature is suited to adapting to change, which has swept the industry during his tenure. When he started in the business, there were 40 distilleries in Kentucky. Now, there are eight.

"It's sad," he says. "But the small distilleries just can't compete."

In 1981, French spirits maker Pernod Ricardbought Austin Nichols, then parent company of Wild Turkey. Russell remembers it was an anxious time. But so far, the executives at Pernod Ricard have been smart enough to leave Russell and his fine bourbon well enough alone.

Retirement isn't in the picture

In one of the nearby warehouses, stacked from creaky floor to spider-webbed ceiling with 20,000 barrels of whiskey, smelling ethereally sweet of bourbon and old oak, Russell's eyes well up when he's coaxed to remember the fire of 2000. He was on a business trip in Spain when the messages began arriving with the frightening news.

He felt helpless, being so far away. The fire was contained to one warehouse, destroying more than 17,000 barrels, but the good thing was no one was hurt.

"They still don't know what started it," Russell says, shaking his head.

He won't say much more about the fire. It's a superstition he shares with other distillers. He will talk about how they've learned not to stack barrels around the freight elevator in this warehouse, where the soft, winter sunshine slips through barred windows.

"The air doesn't circulate right here for some reason," he says.

Air circulation, which fluctuates in temperature with the seasons, is vital because it affects the aging and flavor of the bourbon in the barrels. But this poor circulation is specific, Russell says, to the vicinity of the elevator - on the first floor only, in this warehouse.

Just one more thing he has learned in half a century.

There is talk, time to time, of his retirement. Eddie might be in line to succeed his father at the top of Wild Turkey.

But it's clear the master isn't ready to leave. When he thinks no one is watching, he rubs the smooth bottom of a bourbon barrel with his palm, as if stroking the head of a thoroughbred.

"I'm still glad to be here," he says.

E-mail snipped-for-privacy@enquirer.com

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Reply to
Garrison Hilliard
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I by God love Jimmy Russell. It's apparently becoming trendy among some bourbon aficionados to run down the accomplishments of people like Jimmy, Booker Noe, and Bill Samuels and his daddy; the line is that these guys don't really do that much, and it's all marketing. Hogwash. Day to day is what it's all about, and that's what these guys are. Oh, and these recommended whiskeys: all of 'em are damned good. If you can find last year's Evan Williams Single Barrel (the 1994), it's even better than this year's. But the Hirsch...my oh my.

-- Lew Bryson

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Author of "New York Breweries" and "Pennsylvania Breweries," 2nd ed., both available at The Hotmail address on this post is for newsgroups only: I don't check it, or respond to it. Spam away.

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Reply to
Lew Bryson

I'm fairly new to bourbons but I thought the EWSB 1994 was this year's. I just finished off a bottle of '94 and love it, especially at $25! Lew, are you saying that the 1995 vintage is available now?

Eugene

Reply to
Eugene

That is correct, sir, got one sitting on my shelf.

-- Lew Bryson

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Author of "New York Breweries" and "Pennsylvania Breweries," 2nd ed., both available at The Hotmail address on this post is for newsgroups only: I don't check it, or respond to it. Spam away.

Reply to
Lew Bryson

And here I'm stuck with the '93. :^(

Best regards, Bill

Reply to
Bill Becker

Hey, nothing wrong with the '93! I've got a bottle of 1990 that I'm thinking about mixing with Coke, though.

-- Lew Bryson

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Author of "New York Breweries" and "Pennsylvania Breweries," 2nd ed., both available at The Hotmail address on this post is for newsgroups only: I don't check it, or respond to it. Spam away.

Reply to
Lew Bryson

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