As both the son and grandson of Wild Turkey royalty, you might think associate master blender and third-generation whiskey maker Bruce Russell had no choice but to follow in the footsteps of his famous father, Eddie, and revered grandfather, Jimmy, both of whom are master distillers. However, the truth is, had he not taken a summer job hosting tours of the Wild Turkey facility while in college, Russell may never have started down the path that ultimately led him here, to a sun-drenched rooftop courtyard on a glorious Sydney morning.
Russell is in town to discuss Beacon, the new entry in Wild Turkey’s lauded Master’s Keep series and a highly personal collaboration he undertook with his father. As the 10th and (for now) final Master’s Keep effort, as well as its highest proof, Beacon saw Russell work closely with his dad to craft a release he sees as a way of “shining a light on the future of bourbon”. If this bold take on America’s signature whiskey category is anything to go by, it’s safe to say bourbon’s future is very bright indeed.
Relaxing in a particularly well-lit corner of the upstairs bar at popular Sydney venue Old Mate’s Place, Russell’s relaxed air of Kentucky geniality is on full display as he charismatically delves into what it was like growing up in whiskey country, why bourbon is finally receiving its due, and how his 90-year-old grandfather is still the man when it comes to Wild Turkey.
His Father’s Footsteps
“When you live in Kentucky, having a family that makes whiskey isn’t at all special. Everybody does it,” Russell chuckles. “We lived just a few miles from the distillery, and I lived one street away from my grandfather. We were basically neighbours. So I was around this whiskey thing my whole life, but it wasn’t something I ever wanted to do.”
While the idea of whiskey making in Kentucky has a certain romantic quality when viewed from the other side of the world, for a long time, Russell’s day-to-day contact with the industry tinged it with a certain mundanity that led him to seek other opportunities.
“I actually went to school for engineering, and thought I would build robots,” he reveals. “I wanted to be a mechanical engineer. But that changed when I was 21 and started giving tours at the distillery as a summer job between college semesters. It was only then that I started to fall in love with it.”
A turning point came when Eddie Russell joined one of his son’s tours and delivered some stinging feedback: “I was very intimidated because he was already the master distiller at that time. He took my tour, and at the end of it, he said, ‘I think you did a pretty good job, but you really don’t know much of anything. You know what we do, but you really don’t know why we do it.’”
Russell readily admits this critique upset him, but he took it as an opportunity to ask his usually reserved father to teach him, a request Russell senior surprisingly agreed to. The following day, the two spent the whole afternoon together as Eddie imparted as much knowledge as he could.
“You know, if Dad spoke to me for four hours that day, that’s 3 hours and 59 minutes more than he ever had in his whole life up to that point. I remember going home and telling my mother it was almost like meeting my dad for the first time. I also realised pretty quickly that not only did I really enjoy the whiskey thing, but that it also came pretty naturally to me.”
From there, Russell devoted himself to learning the processes that go into every bottle of Wild Turkey; methods his grandfather had learned in the ’50s and ’60s, before taking over the operation. These remain the bedrock of the iconic distillery to this day, although, as Russell is quick to point out, there have been changes aplenty since Jimmy was his age.
Generations Collide
“It might sound weird to a consumer, but major distilleries today are automated,” explains Russell. “They’re not like when Jimmy was running things and every part of the process was done by hand. So today, a computer runs it automatically, 24/7. We have people supervising, but they don’t really change the process. The automated system runs our entire distillery operation, but it still follows Jimmy’s recipes and his ways of making Wild Turkey.”
Despite this rise of the machines, the figure of Jimmy Russell still looms large within the world of Wild Turkey, and his authority remains unquestioned to this day. Russell recounts a particular week when this authority was on full display as the whiskey veteran took his time showing his still-new-to-the-industry grandson how to make whiskey the old-school way, much to the chagrin of those looking to maximise Wild Turkey’s output.
“Eleven years ago, before I started travelling and talking about the product publicly, Jimmy took me aside and said, ‘We’re gonna make whiskey together.’ That was my test; if I passed, Jimmy would put me on the road.
“We spent a whole week together doing everything the old-school way,” he continues. “Not just letting the computer run it automatically. The distillery probably wasn’t happy because it slowed things down, which meant less product that week. Still, we did everything from grain quality checks and the grain intake to milling, cooking, fermentation, and slowing the stills down like they used to run back when Jimmy was distilling everything by hand. Watching a true expert with at that point 60 years of experience go about his craft was amazing. To work with him in that way was something I never thought I’d get to do.”
Even to this day, Jimmy does his best to keep his grandson on his toes: “Jimmy’s 90 years old, but he still comes to work every day. He likes to give me a hard time, poke his head into the lab and say, ‘Don’t mess it up!’ To spend that week with him is probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my career, still to this day.”
Passing the Torch
If that’s the coolest, a close second has to be Master’s Keep Beacon, a collaboration between Russell and his father that unsurprisingly—perhaps even inevitably—also can’t escape the influence of Jimmy.
“Beacon really is a chance for Dad and me to do something together that highlights what we both really enjoy,” he says. “It definitely has a lot of Eddie Russell in it, but at the same time, when you look at the proof and its bold, almost aggressive flavour, it’s very much in line with the way Jimmy makes whiskey, too. A touch of Jimmy always has to be in there somewhere.”
When I ask if this collaboration with his father is a way of simultaneously honouring the past and passing the torch, Russell nods: “It definitely is. I’m proud to work with my dad on a project that shows off our relationship in whiskey and in life. One that shows we trust each other in a way we wouldn’t have when I first entered the industry. To know I have his approval means the world, because if I didn’t, he’d tell me, ‘You’re not ready.’”
Russell continues, “The thing that means the most with this project, is that people will get to try something we worked on together, but they also see Dad giving me his stamp of approval to continue with his legacy, my grandfather’s legacy, and the legacy of our distillery, which is more than just the three of us; there’s been thousands of union employees over the years. Incredibly, there have been just two other master distillers before Jimmy, which is crazy. We’ve been open since 1860, and we’ve only had four master distillers. But when one of them has worked there for 71 years, and Dad is now on year 44, I’m unquestionably still the new guy at 15 years.”
The Bourbon Boom
As our conversation nears its end, I feel compelled to ask Russell about the state of the bourbon industry today. Long viewed as a lesser sibling to the titans of Scotch and other whiskeys, bourbon has been enjoying something of a purple patch over recent years. The dynamic has started to shift as a new generation of sophisticated and premium bourbons has been released into the market, Master’s Keep Beacon being a particularly compelling example of this.
“For most of my young life, throughout the ’90s and early 2000s, bourbon really didn’t have the cachet worldwide that it has right now,” explains Russell. “For a long time, you would mostly think of it as a four-year-old product that’s very sweet and goes well with Coca-Cola. But you look at something like Beacon, and it has 16-year-old whiskey in it, making it something else entirely.”
Russell concludes, “We’ve recently been bottling whiskeys that are up to 20 years old. That just wasn’t a thing back in the day. So we’ve matured as an industry, and when you look at the products we and even some of our competitors now release, we’ve undoubtedly entered a special new era for bourbon.”
Wild Turkey Master’s Keep Beacon is available now from select retailers.
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