Heifer Spice
Beast Masters Club Exclusive
Russell’s Reserve Private Barrel Bourbon
Distilled October 2009
Warehouse K, Floor 3
110 Proof

On the coldest day of the year, your faithful beasts found ourselves in Kentucky barrel picking with our friend Eddie Russell. These tasting sessions usually happen in Wild Turkey’s Warehouse A, which was built in the 1890s. But it was in the single digits and snowing, way too cold to be able to taste anything in the unheated warehouse. So we set up shop in the old visitors center, a little wood captain’s house down the block from the distillery.

Since he couldn’t thief tastes directly from the barrels, Eddie brought a ludicrous amount of glass barrel sample bottles and laid them out on the table. It actually turned out to be one of the deepest Turkey tastings that we’ve done. We lined up about twelve different samples ranging from several of the old warehouses to the new Camp Nelson facility. All of Wild Turkey’s warehouses are six stories tall, and Eddie always prefers barrels from the middle floors, so all of these were from the third or fourth floor.

So two frigid beast masters sat down to work, still in our Carhartt’s and knit caps, rubbing our hands together, and rubbing the glasses to try and warm up the whiskey. We new on that day we’d want something warm and spicy. And we found it. Actually we found three of them.

Our system is to line up all the samples from left to right and nose them all. Then we pull forward the glasses with the best nose. Then we sip them all and pull forward the ones with the best palate. The ones that don’t make the first round get pushed back. Then we go through the whole lineup again until we end up with our favorites pulled forward and everything else pushed back.

We were focused, determined, and cold. Totally ignoring each other, Smoky Beast and Jew Done Drank Ma Whiskey sipped through barrel after barrel, aiming for the warmest spiciest barrels that would help us regain feeling in our toes. We wanted chili peppers, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla, the kind of hearty dram that takes you into a cozy chair by the fire. Finally we looked up, smiling, having chosen our favorites. And wouldn’t you know it, out of a dozen samples, we had the SAME THREE BARRELS out in front. We’d picked two sister barrels from an October 14th, 2009 run aged in Lawrenceburg Warehouse K 3rd Floor, and also a deliciously spicy Camp Nelson barrel from Warehouse CNA, November ‘09, 4th Floor.

So we couldn’t do anything but take all three. We decided to name this trio, “Spicy Girls”, since they are by far the spiciest of the Turkey picks we’ve done so far. This first barrel, “Heifer-Spice” truly embodies the spirit of the day. It’s got huge cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, little pink peppercorns, and just a warm cake-y, buttery fullness that really hit the spot on that cold day. The Heifer produced 150 bottles. It came out of the barrel at 113.8 proof and sits beautifully, un-chill-filtered at 110.

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