The celebratory new bourbon honoring Jimmy's 70th year at the distillery is bottled at 101 proof and priced at just $50. (Photo by Danny Clinch)
Before Bruce Russell took on the mantle of blender at Wild Turkey, his father, Eddie, sat him down for a talk. “One of the first things my dad told me, just as I was starting out at the distillery, was ‘I want you to think really hard about this, not because the job isn’t good or I don’t think you’ll be good at it, but because for the rest of your life you’ll have to give a part of yourself to everybody else,’” he recalls. “And my dad learned that from Jimmy [Russell], who’s given more of himself to the distillery and its fans than anyone else. When I did start hitting the road for the distillery, I realized there were people—a lot of them—who knew Jimmy more than me, and they had these awesome stories about him and the things he’s done over the years.” And a great many years it’s been for Jimmy, who is celebrating his 70th year at Wild Turkey this month.
It’s a remarkable milestone for anyone, but becomes even more so when you consider that Jimmy still shows up to work most days of the week. “‘Retire’ has never been in his vocabulary, and I’ve been hearing that since he was 65 years old,” laughs Eddie. “He’s almost 90 now, and he’s at the distillery five to six days a week, sitting down and talking to people, signing bottles, and telling stories. It’s rejuvenating for him, and he hasn’t lost any of the charisma he’s always had.” These days, Joretta often joins him at the distillery too, according to Eddie, and the pair will hold court for hours at a time.
In setting out to make a whiskey that honored Jimmy and his 70 years at Wild Turkey, Eddie and Bruce wanted a dram that captured the essence of the patriarch in the glass. “To Jimmy, whiskey is for everybody,” explains Bruce. “He comes from a blue-collar background, and he likes products that are inexpensive so that anyone can get them, so this is going to be the largest one-off product we’ve ever done, and it’s just $50.” The new Jimmy Russell’s 70th Anniversary bourbon comes in at 8 years old—Jimmy’s preferred age for bourbon—with some slightly older, 9 year old whiskey blended in, and it’s bottled at, what else, 101 proof.
Jimmy got his start sweeping Wild Turkey’s floors in 1954, when he was 18 years old. The distillery wasn’t in his initial plans; after graduating high school in Lawrenceburg, he left for college in Georgetown, Kentucky to play basketball. Homesickness struck once he started school, however, and it led him to return to Lawrenceburg soon after; it was around this time that he met Joretta—his wife of 71 years—whom he credits with getting him to the distillery in the first place. “She pushed me to apply for a job at Wild Turkey, which is where she worked at the time—I guess you could say it all started with her, which makes sense,” Jimmy says. “The rest is history, as they say.”
Under then-master distiller Bill Hughes’ tutelage, Jimmy rose through the ranks at Wild Turkey, working just about every job at the distillery before becoming master distiller himself in 1967. For the first half of his Turkey tenure, the bourbon industry looked markedly different than it does today—it was in a deep slump, hurt by overproduction and rock-bottom sales. Jimmy, however, stuck it out and soldiered on, making bourbon in the same way that Hughes had originally taught him. “If something is right, you keep doing it that way—I don’t believe in change, even after all these years,” he says. “When I started, everyone was bottling at 100 proof, but at Wild Turkey we went against the grain and bottled at 101, and that’s the way we’ve been doing it for 70 years.” One notable exception to Jimmy’s resistance to change was his introduction of Rare Breed in 1991; inspired by Booker Noe, Jimmy batched 6 to 12 year old whiskey together and released it at barrel proof under the Rare Breed name, at the time marking the first new line in the distillery’s history.
Even as Eddie, and now Bruce, have since introduced a great many new whiskeys to the Wild Turkey lineup, 101 and Rare Breed remain nearest and dearest to Jimmy’s heart. “Back when Jimmy was still traveling with me and Dad, we’d end up at bars, and if there was something cool, like an old vintage or rare bottle of Wild Turkey, Dad and I were going to get that,” says Bruce. “Jimmy, on the other hand, would get 101 or Rare Breed. Those are the only two things he’d order, no matter where we went.” (Of the two, Jimmy’s favorite whiskey is 101, served neat; he likes to quip that if you don’t like it, he’ll happily drink it for you.)
The new whiskey is available nationwide, and will have a spot on the shelf at the Jimmy Russell Wild Turkey Experience (the distillery’s newly renovated visitor center) as well…who knows, if you make it over there, you might just be able to get your bottle signed by the man himself.
