American Whiskey Review #47: Wild Turkey Master Keep 17 Year Bottled-in-Bond

Image credit to /u/Dr0me  here

Distillery: Wild Turkey

Region: Kentucky

ABV: 50%

Age: 17 Year.

Color: 1.6, Mahogany/Henna Notes. Natural Color and Non-Chill Filtered.

Nose: (according to the wife) Lots of baking spices here. It smells a bit of cherry pie with some vanilla. There’s a tinge of orange extract and a lot of oak. So much oak.

Palate: On the first sip, you get a mouthful of cherry with a hint of vanilla and cream. It’s quickly over taken by oak and with subsequent sips, the oak dominates more and more.

Finish: Long. Tons of oak with a bit of varnish. It’s slightly on the bitter side as well. It eventually gets a bit of a drying effect.

Conclusion: Well-aged Wild Turkey, how can you not get excited for that? I was really looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, it didn’t hit the right notes for me. The nose is pretty nice especially with the cherry pie and orange extract notes, but there’s a lot of oak as well which is a bit of a warning for things to come. The first sip is nice with cherries, vanilla, and cream but the oak that creeps in ends up dominating this whisky and those more subtle notes are lost very quickly. The finish is long, but again dominated by oak. If you like your whiskey to taste like wood, you’ll love this, but it isn’t for me.

Final Score: 74.

American Whiskey Review #47, Bourbon Review #34, Whisky Network Review #279

Scoring Legend:

• 96-100: The perfect dram, nectar of the gods.
• 90-95: Near perfect, there is something truly special about this whisky.
• 85-89: Amazing, will always try to keep a bottle of this in my collection (if feasible).
• 80-84: Very Good, maybe only one minor nitpick about the whisky keeping it here.
• 75-79: Good, quite enjoyable to drink.
• 70-74: Solid, wouldn’t go out of my way to get it.
• 60-69: Meh, still drinkable.
• Below 59: If you have a bottle of this, start cooking with it instead.