Russell’s Reserve 13
Photo illustration: Brad Japhe
Aaron Goldfarb knows a thing or two about American whiskey. The award-winning author – and card-carrying Kentucky Colonel – has written numerous books on the subject. One of his most popular was a 2019 tome entitled Hacking Whiskey, in which he shares ingenious techniques for molding and re-shaping aged spirits to incorporate and extract novel flavors from the comfort of your home bar; a DIY exercise intended to enhance whatever was initially placed into the bottle.
Of course his all-time favorite bottles are in need of no adulteration, whatsoever. And after nearly two decades in the industry Goldfarb has compiled dozens that could fall into this vaunted subcategory. Many of them are specific vintages of one-off liquids that would be more accurately labeled as “unobtainium” rather than mere bourbon or rye.
Ask him to pick one to rule them all and you’d expect some degree of hesitancy. But when it comes to relatively attainable offerings – stuff that you can hope to find on the shelves of your local liquor store on any given day, he actually is quite quick to single out one selection in particular:
“Is it possible Russell’s Reserve 13 is the best yearly bourbon release these days?” Goldfarb rhetorically asks himself when prodded for response. “In a world of overhyped (and overpriced) allocated whiskeys, it quietly continues to deliver, year after year. So I’d say yes.”
It’s a timely reveal, considering that the label just released a 2026 iteration of the modern classic. And this is a special one: bottled in honor of master distiller Eddie Russell’s 45th anniversary with Wild Turkey, the Kentucky-based producer responsible for the liquid. Eddie first introduced the eponymous offshoot back in 2001 to honor his legendary dad, Jimmy Russell. But it wasn’t until 2021 that a 13-year variant hit shelves. The latest is a brown sugar bomb, bottled at a cask strength of 121.2 proof and — despite the official age statement – was actually compiled from barrels between 14 and 18 years in age.
“Deep and rich in flavor and aroma, this is Wild Turkey par excellence: toffee, oak, pipe smoke, leather, and a spicy finish,” says Goldfarb of the Russell’s Reserve 13 taste profile. “Non-chill filtered and barrel proof, this is a bourbon lover’s bourbon—not some luxury release meant to appeal to the masses with more money than taste. The Russell family has always made bourbon for people like them and this will forever be their crown jewel.”
To clarify his first point about luxury release: this is a $200 bottle of bourbon, which comfortably qualifies it as an ultra-premium product. But it’s also one that you can usually find for close to retail price. The secondary market isn’t forcing you to drop 10x the SRP – as it does for so many of Russell’s allocated counterparts. Perhaps this boils down to a phenomenon that Goldfarb has been writing about for over a decade. While the masses see Wild Turkey as some sort of bottom-shelf label, “bourbon cognoscenti” recognize the sophisticated “funk” this special distillery brings to the bottle.
Indeed, for three generations (and for over 70 years) the Russell family has been crafting whiskey in a special way. To underscore the point, the brand unveiled a short film on the subject this June, coinciding with its latest bourbon release. You can watch it below. But you also don’t have to take the company’s own word for it. Trust an expert instead. As Goldfarb points out, Russell’s Reserve 13 isn’t just built different from the rest – it’s built better. Eddie, it seems, has found a way to “hack whiskey” before it even enters the bottle.
Leave a comment