Wild Turkey 101 Flavor Variation
Over the past few years of drinking bourbon, I’ve noticed some large differences in flavor profile when it comes to Wild Turkey 101 bourbon. Naturally I was curious and wanted to figure out why. It was a little disappointing at first, but as I’ve learned, there can be many things to consider when it comes to “flavor drift” or batch variation.
To provide some context, I have only been into bourbon for about 4 years. I know that isn’t a long time, and truthfully, it isn’t, especially in comparison to the large history of bourbon, and the recent bourbon boom of the past 10-15 years. I expect many people who read this may have been drinking bourbon, or an enthusiast in bourbon longer that me, and I humbly want to acknowledge that, but also hope to write about my observations of what I’ve experienced, and observations of what I’ve learned from others. I fell deeply into the sinkhole of learning about bourbon since that point 4 years ago learning mash bills of many distilleries, distilling techniques, different barrel aging techniques, and reading too many nerdy books about bourbon. I actually learned a lot about what I know about bourbon from listening to the entire catalog of the Bourbon Pursuit Podcast.
I mentioned all this to point out that I haven’t experienced a lot of this first hand, but I have heard other people talk about these topics as well. I want to do my best to present my opinion, speculative theories, and truth in a way that is generally positive. This is a LARGE topic to cover, so here goes.
When I got into bourbon 4 years ago, naturally I started off scouring the web for best beginner bourbons. Yes, the clickbait lists “best of” articles and YouTube videos. Who doesn’t love a good “Top 10” list? Wild Turkey have a few products that make it into these lists. A lot of the bourbons we tend to see on these lists are Wild Turkey 101, Old Granddad bonded, Old Granddad 114, Weller Special Reserve, Four Roses Small Batch, Michter’s Small Batch Bourbon, Knob Creek 9 year, Maker’s Mark, Buffalo Trace, 1792, Green River, etc… (Side note: The category for available, affordable bourbons in a reasonable proof range has grown astronomically). Usually the main incentives to purchase these bourbons is they are available in most markets, and the flavor is consistent. They are the “ole reliable” bourbons you can count on. Although I don’t find myself drinking many of these bourbons anymore, for the most part, if I’ve taste any of them recently, they remind me of just how the did when I first tried them years ago with one big exception: Wild Turkey 101.
The reasons it was recommended to have as apart of a beginner collection is, it’s classic bourbon: vanilla, caramel, oak, spice, with a little bit of ‘funk’. (If you’ve tasted a lot of Wild Turkey products you probably know what the ‘funk’ I’m referring to is. It’s kind of hard to describe, but you know it when you taste it). Now they don’t market this, but as I’ve come to hear from fans and other enthusiasts, this ‘funk’ flavor is an endearing and desired flavor. It can best be attributed to an old oaky and nutty flavor… forgive me for the tangent. Many Bourbon Youtubers and reviewers consider WT 101 as a standard. The sentiment of, “If a bourbon can’t beat 101 for $26 bucks, it’s not worth it.” Now that is still true to some extent, but not many other distilleries can compete with that besides other large scale producers. But the boiled-down idea is this: Wild Turkey 101 is solid, consistent, affordable, and can be used for anything.
The first time I tried Wild Turkey 101 after I first bought it as a newbie in bourbon was this past year, 2024. I just got it to mix some cocktails. It’s a solid mixer, but it also is really nice sipped neat as well. So I tried a sip, and I was unpleasantly surprised. It didn’t taste like I remembered at all. It tasted watery, nutty, overly citrusy like lemon pledge with that alcohol smell, and a good bit of cinnamon. I was shocked. Not long after that the Jimmy Russell 70th Anniversary Edition of WT 101 came out. After I picked that up and opened it, it tasted just like I remember 101 tasting. That is what really started this whole thing for me. Initially, I thought maybe I just got a bad bottle or something, but later I started to see some Youtubers talking about it as well. Their reviews were very similar to what I was tasting: the bourbon tasted young, harsh, and not what we remembered it tasting like. Yet, the other Wild Turkey, products seemed to be tasting great. It created a lot of questions in my mind. And on top of that compared to bottles of WT 101 from even a few years ago, the newer batches weren’t even close.
Over the past couple years, Wild Turkey has started to raise prices on many of their limited release products, like Master’s Keep, and subsequent releases of Russell’s 13 year. Later with the Single Rickhouse releases, the prices were also very high compared to what we were used to from Wild Turkey. Now I would imagine with the bourbon boom, there were many reasons for this, and as a company if you can make more money, in most cases, it would be wise not to try, but I don’t want to focus on that in this article. My jaded response to why it happening was that Wild Turkey was raising prices on high end product, and lowering quality on lower end product. And since the high end products were getting such good reviews, it was fine. Now that very well may have been true, but it is also an accusation not based on a lot of truth, simply a frustrated speculation. Especially since Wild Turkey markets themselves as a kind of blue collar, good-bourbon-affordable-price kind of brand.
Now I want to pivot to some other factors: batch variation, blending, scale, other distillery changes, and mistakes. Starting with batch variation and blending, since these go hand in hand. In learning about how bourbon products get put out, there is a lot to be said about blending. This is something I’ve noticed has gotten lots of recognition over the past few years, especially with newer NDP (Non-Distilling Producers) who have distinguished themselves buying bourbon from distilleries you may have had before, but blending it differently and highlighting different components in the whiskey. It can taste completely different in some cases. Usually these big distilleries have a certain profile in mind when blending their whiskey, and barrels that don’t fit that profile can either be blended out or not used in the blend at all and used for something else. This is usually why we know a distillery for a certain flavor profile. Blending has a lot to do with how the end product will taste.
From what I’ve heard from distillers, blenders, and industry professionals, it seems that sometimes, one single barrel can ruin a whole blend if the flavor of that barrel is strong enough, and in other cases, if you have an abundance of other barrels to “overwhelm” that flavor, in a sense, then that flavor can be blended out. There are so many things that can affect the final outcome of the blend, that this conversation could be drawn out for much longer, and we could nitpick each little thing that could affect it. But, the idea here is that blending is an art, and not easy to do. If you’ve ever tried to make your own blend at home that tastes comparable or better to something you find on the shelf of a liquor store, you also may have realized, it’s not easy. Any company will tell you that blending is hard to do consistently. In my own experience, I’ve tasted my own blend of whiskeys, and after a couple days it doesn’t taste good that great. It’s as though all the components are fighting each other, and then after a few weeks of sitting in the bottle, it mingles and mellows and feels cohesive. This instance, though may not perfectly translate to the operations of the large distilleries, but an example nonetheless, shows a potential difficulty in blending process.
Scale is another thing to consider. Once I started to learn the grand scale that some of these batches can be, which can be hundreds of barrels (with one barrel averages ~220 bottles depending on age), that is a daunting consideration. I think it might be easy to think that if a large number of barrels are dumped together, the flavor profile is similar in most of them, and they would just equalize… which is not the case. If you’ve ever tasted a single barrel bourbons, you may start to realize that some barrels may not even taste like it was made at a particular distillery because it tastes so different. Then thinking about that on a large scale and trying to hand-pick barrels… well that isn’t much of an option. When scale is taken into account, consistency at that size would be difficult. Now I do think the best distilleries find a way. Considering they have large batched products of many kinds, and WT 101 is the only one that seems to have shifted over the years, that says something, but I also have some speculative theories I want to get into.
As a bourbon nerd, I’ve come to draw some of my own conclusions as to why things change. These are formed from things I’ve read, podcasts I’ve listened to, and other opinions as well. One that I did not come up with but is starting to become a more prominent idea is environmental factors making whiskey taste different. This is referred to as Terroir, or oversimplified, “the taste of the region." When bourbon was made 15-20 years ago, oak was much older that was being made into barrels, and this more mature oak would mature whiskey and give off ‘smoother’ or ‘rounded’ flavor to the whiskey. Most whiskey connoisseurs would agree that whiskey made in a previous era has better flavors, whether this is actually true or not is up to your palate. Another thing that isn’t speculative, but can affect whiskey flavor is differences in distillation. As distilling techniques have gotten better, some things have changed, even though what is marketed by most distilleries is trying to keep everything the same in order to uphold the flavor. There have even been distilleries who have dented their new still in the same spot as their old still out of superstition that it might be contributing something unique to their whiskey.
Furthermore with distillation techniques, its no secret that Wild Turkey have changed their barrel entry proof (which is lower than when it comes off the still after distillation). They have changed it from 107, to 110, and now to 115, and although that may not seem like much, it could be a major factor in flavor. Their entry proof is even lower than many larger distilleries as well. Buffalo Trace and Heaven Hill both put their bourbon in the barrel at the maximum 125 proof. There is numerous reasons that these distilleries have chosen these numbers outside of the fact that if you have higher proof going into the barrel, your yield will be higher. These changes in entry proof have affected the flavor of their whiskey over time according to many people who have been in the industry for a while and tasted many older expressions of 101 vs. newer expressions.
Another speculation is that potentially some batches had to be bottled faster than others and didn’t mingle as well, or maybe there truly was a mistake and whiskey that wasn’t intended to be added, was added, and the flavor was affected. We are human, and mess-ups do happen. Now that may not be the case, but it could be that a couple batches weren’t up to quality that some others were, or there could be some older barrels could be in some batches, and that’s why some taste younger than others. This leads me to one ultimate speculative theory.
This theory is that over the past few year as Wild Turkey has grown to meet demand with a new still and more production, and introducing a lot of new SKU’s, a.k.a new products, that Wild Turkey was planning on bringing the 8 year 101 Wild Turkey back to the U.S. This used to be the regular Wild Turkey 101 and it was age stated at 8 years old, but as demand went up, the age statement went away and became an overseas exclusive. Now I say this in hindsight as I know the 8 year 101 has been released in the U.S. as a shelf product again in 2025. In order to distinguish 8 year 101 from regular 101, and to justify a price difference, I think that they started to use younger barrels closer to 6 years (the website used to specify regular 101 is 6-8 years old, but no longer says this), and started to hold back barrels for these older releases of 101. It could have been the plan for a long time and from a money perspective, it seems like a good move, but again, that may not have been the plan at all, and that seems like a logical reason for how things played out.
I may not be the only one who has noticed some batch variation, and I’m sure this isn’t foreign to other distilleries as well, but I wanted to point this out and see if you had similar thoughts or experiences. Again, this is a much larger conversation that I’ve tried to condense much shorter, so this is not nearly exhaustive, and primarily speculative, but either way, one point remains, Wild Turkey makes great whiskey even with batch or flavor variations!
Monday, June 2, 2025
Article by: Drew Martin
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