Wild Turkey 101 is a brawny but complex bourbon at a good price.

I love Wild Turkey. The Russel father-son team are talented distillers. Turkey 101 is fairly inexpensive mass market hooch and I've been tasting top drawer stuff lately. How would it hold up? Quite well, as you will see:
Color in the glass: medium bronze-amber.

Toffee fruity sherry nose w/ salted roasted peanut note. With more time the fruit takes on a meaty quality - bacon. There's more grape sherry or Madeira notes too. There's also a solvent note that carries burnt rubber. With even more time I get a bit more burnt rubber to go with the roast peanut, bacon, and Madeira cocktail. I like that it's distinctive and unique. I could learn to love it, but it's not the aroma profile I would have said I wanted in advance.

Entry is toffee sweet and richly honeyed with an immediate drying midpalate. Peppery with a beer-like tang of herbs with a bitter edge like hops and a whiff of smoke (that is oddly absent in the finish). Theres a kiss of vanilla after extra airing and some of that nice sherry flavor too. Sweet then off dry with herbal notes. I've been seeing that lately with fancier offerings like Woodford and 4 Roses single barrel. I suspect its a higher rye balance in the mashbill.

Finish is long and spare with spirit heat beer malt and hops echo. Elegant, lean, surprisingly drinkable with an interesting and varied flavor profile. Gives up a little to the best in the areas of flavor intensity, and wood notes but holds it's own as an interesting robust and varied bourbon. Excellent value.

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