Wild Turkey Master's Keep Bottled in Bond 17 Year

Neat. Neck pour. Super excited about this pour. I love the original 17 Master Keep and despite its low proof it is oily and packed with flavor. So what would a 17 year 100 proof taste like? It has to be ever better I’d imagine. Holy crap. Amazing. It’s aged is felt immediately with dark notes of oak and dark chocolate. But it surprisingly lightens up with vanilla and pears. A delightful hard candy caramel. That sweet oak is the main event though. It is oak, leather, tobacco all at once. Type of nose I could spend all night enjoying. Texture is creamy but less oily than expected. Cherry cola up front. Such a rich cherry too. Transitions into chocolate mouse but brightens up again into the inside of a cherry cordial. The legs are then dark and saturated in that oak. These legs. They last and evolve for minutes to come. Back and forth between the vanilla and the oak. It’s an amazing bourbon. It’s on the verge of being over oaked,but it doesn’t go all the way and the oak remains it’s most amazing note in the nose and legs. I intend to compare this to Russell’s 2002 but top of mind it is a far superior pour.

So as with all other reviews so far...I haven't spent enough time for a proper review but lets go. I've had this now 3 times (not just 3 pours). I've compared it side by side with decades and a 10 year pick of spirit. I've also put it next to Knob creek 15 year which I'll be getting to sooner than later. So I think I have at least the general notes on this one. Nose - Instantly the funky turkey notes come out, I don't like the words dusty as that implies a decades old bottling and this is nothing like that. I'm fairly certain that this is camp nelson which is kinda the turkey boy lover's rickhouse and likely one that will upset non turkey lovers. I'm a bit agnostic with wild turkey...I like them but I don't think their "off" notes are some kind of magical dream land. With that funk however is an amazingly sweet nose. Each swirl gives me something new, from vanilla, creme brulee, shoe polish, wood finish, deep old oak (good sweet oak) and deep old funky oak. There's a lot to unwind and it never seems to come at you the same way twice in a row. Water teases out more spice which is a surprisingly big part of this bottle. Taste - So the first pour today and what strikes me is not any one flavor, but how many layers there are here. Up front just non descriptive sweetness, almost a corn sugar like note. Then there's a level of richness and more vanilla and light hints of oak. Then you think you're going into a finish, but you're not there yet. You get darker sweets, perhaps some chocolate, some oak, and a sharp and shocking spicy note. FINALLY, we're onto a finish where you get oak funky oak and well aged vanillas. Water mutes a lot of the transitions and brings the whisky together more. Here there's a bit more bitterness and sourness to the oak and the spice comes in earlier and then fades. Water does this whisky ZERO favors. Overall I think wild turkey has done a really nice job with this bottling. They've managed to bring us a high oak and high sweet expression of wild turkey and not dumbed it down for the masses like a Buffalo Trace offering would have done. I think this will please huge turkey fans, but I don't see this being a wow bottle to those who aren't in the turkey camp already. This is a niche bottling that show cases a profile I don't believe the average bourbon drinker, experienced or not will want to pay huge premiums for. And with that I'm left with a challenging score to give. 175 MSRP but a great many stores are asking over 200 (which is sadly what I paid). Price not considered in the scoring here, but it's worth noting it. If you really are a hardcore Turkey fan this might be a 90 or about a 4.0 but for the rest of the world that's about an 85 or a 3.25. Lets call it a day at a 3.5. Review done after about 5-6 pours of this over the course of 4 days. There's been no noticeable change with the bottle being open but this is one that may take upwards of 6 months to change.

Taste: 2 oz. neat in glen cairn, then 1 oz with 2 drops of water in a flight with three other WTMK expressions. Nose: The first thing that strikes me is that signature Wild Turkey dusty, funky nose. It isn't soggy or woody but more like an old leather library book. Think the nose on Rare Breed but older, dustier, and amped up, and with less ethanol. Moving past that I got delicious vanilla with apple blossoms. I wouldnt say the taste was exactly all floral, but more like that smell you would get when walking through an orchard- part flowers, part apple skins. Lastly, plenty of oak. The nose seems to bloom and roll out of the glass and fills the room. Palate: The dusty WT funk note is unabashedly front and center. Vanilla transforms to a spicier cherry note, almost like cherry cough lozenger followed by oak and then fading to ripe red apple. All the while there is barrel char hiding in the background that is just enough not to overwhelm, but let you know that this has been in the barrel for a good long while. The complexity on the palate is a captivating roller coaster ride that features all the best of the things that Wild Turkey is known for, and perhaps the best is yet to come on the finish. CAUTION- Some may get overwhelmed with the dusty WT signature note. Fans like me will say they have been waiting all of their Turkey lives to get to that level in a bottle, while others may lament that there was something in there that was "just a bit off." This expression is aimed at Wild Turkey's fan base, and not a bottle to get you started into their product line. Finish: At 100 proof this outkicks the coverage and finishes like a barrel proof. Not in an ethanol way, but in the rich, warming, and lasting finish. My guess is that at bottling this did not have to be downproofed to get to 100 proof much. The richness is so there, and any bitterness that may have been imparted by adding water is completely missing- a great thing! You get vanilla, cherry, a bit of clove, and nutmeg that will keep you coming back for more! Overall- The bottle lives up to the hype. That said, $175 is a lot of money to pay for the experience. I say this every year when the WTMK series is released, and I think alot of the excess cost is in the fancy magnetic box. What really made me happy on this one is that WT did not stray at all from what makes it a favorite. Instead it took its very best, and then the careful aging made something super that much better! I was afraid that this might be over oaked and taste like soggy wood, but it was not. Just the right amount for an elder statesman without going overboard. The next night I set up a tasting board of 17yr BiB, 17 Yr, Decades, and Revival. I kept Cornerstone out of it to be fair, and here is how I picked them- 1. 17 BiB 2. Revival (could have been a toss up with Decades but the rich, sweet, jamminess of the Sherry finish had me at hello) 3. Decades 4. 17yr- a distant 4th It will be very difficult to knock this out of the running for bourbon of the year.