The Wild Turkey distillery is dramatically sited on a cliff overlooking the Kentucky River, outside of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. Distilling had been going on there in the early 1800s, but James P. Ripy (1844–1922) built his Old Hickory Spring Distillery there in 1891. After a reorganization, it would become the Ripy Brothers Distillery, the name it retained until 1949 (with a nineteen-year break for Prohibition), when it was sold to Robert and Alvin Gould, who would produce their J. T. S. Brown Bourbon there.
The Ripys sold whisky to wholesalers, including a New York company, Austin, Nichols. The story is that the Wild Turkey brand grew out of a wild turkey hunt in 1940, hosted by Thomas McCarthy, the president of Austin, Nichols, who brought along several bottles of bourbon from company stocks. His friends asked for more of “that wild turkey whiskey,” and in 1942, the company branded and bottled a whisky by that name.
Gould sold to Austin, Nichols in 1972, who renamed the facility the Boulevard Distillery. They in turn sold to Pernod-Ricard in 1980. Pernod-Ricard would sell to the Campari Group in 2009. Campari funded a new distillery and visitor center (and new warehouses); the new distillery came online in 2011. It is now known as the Wild Turkey Distillery.
Wild Turkey is now somewhat synonymous with master distiller Jimmy Russell (1934–), who began working at the distillery in 1954. Russell and his son Eddie are the current co-master distillers. The distillery’s Russell’s Reserve brand is a tribute to their work. It should be noted that Wild Turkey was an important brand during the early cocktail renaissance because it had a straight rye whisky at a respectable 50.5 percent ABV that was well aged, widely distributed, and made great Manhattan Cocktails.
The brand includes the Wild Turkey whiskies, the Russell’s Reserve line, and American Honey and American Honey Sting flavored whiskies.
See also Manhattan Cocktail; Pernod-Ricard; and whisky, rye.
Zoeller, Chester. Bourbon in Kentucky: A History of Distilleries in Kentucky. Louisville: Butler, 2009.
By: Lew Bryson