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December 11th marks the halfway point with our Slacker Advent Calendar. So far we’ve had a wild ride and rather than give a complete recap, I’ll just say that our highest average rated bottle up to this point has been a Kentucky Owl Bourbon Batch 9 and the lowest rated bottle has been Wild Turkey Master’s Keep Voyage (the rum finished one). But without fully ruining the surprise, I’m going to at least give this part away: today’s bottle received an average score high enough to move it into first place. What bottle has the chops to do that? Read on.
Blake has finally returned from the dead to offer his insight into today’s bottle meaning we have all 16 members that have contributed tasting notes, scores and guesses. And he’s just in time too, because it was his bottle that we were tasting. But spoiler alert, he did not guess it correctly (I don’t think anybody has guessed theirs at this point). Anyway, let’s roll that beautiful bean footage…
Looks like we have a nice spread of guesses with 5 participants (including yours truly) leaning towards a GTS or Stagg Jr bottle. 4 participants think it’s some old MGP bottle and 3 participants think it’s a Wild Turkey bottle. The consensus seems to be that it’s over 12 years old and the proof is above 110 – with most guesses somewhere between 115 and 130 proof. So what kind of tasting notes are causing people to believe it’s one of these three brands? Let’s take a deeper look.
Before I get into the tasting notes, I have one big observation – the lack of variety among notes that the participants picked up on. I haven’t seen this few tasting notes since Adam’s bottle of WTMK Voyage – the worst rated bottle so far. Yet I’ve already told you that this bottle is the highest rated one we’ve had so far – what gives?
I think the takeaway is that doing a few things well seems to tickle people’s fancy more than bombarding them with a cacophony of flavors. I don’t see myself falling into that camp, but I also can’t argue when the facts are hitting me in the face. As long as you can do oak, caramel, vanilla, baking spice and CHERRIES well, the numbers say you should have a hit on your hands. Adding chocolate and a handful of other sweet notes (honey/brown sugar) only gains you more points. This is why I was absolutely certain what I was tasting was a Stagg Jr. Interestingly enough, I shared my sample with bourbon legend “Barrel Proof Dawn” (IYKYK) and she seemed to agree with my guess after first believing it was a high proof MGP bourbon. Later that night, I sent her a text that shocked her. The bottle we had just tasted was…
December 11th Reveal
…Russell’s Reserve 13 Year Batch 5.
Batch 5 – often referred to LL/LE (L = 2023 and E = May) – was the last of the original five batches released over a three year span. These batches were wildly popular due to the addition of much older bourbon aside from the base 13-year-old barrels. While I’m not sure of the exact makeup of Batch 5, the previous 4 had barrels as old as 18, 19 and 20-years-old in them. For those of you who know your Wild Turkey history, that means they all contained some of the last barrels filled with distillate that entered the barrel at 107 proof. Modern Wild Turkey has used a barrel entry proof of 115 since 2006. A lot of enthusiasts believe the older stuff is instrumental in making these as great as they’ve been received.
Perhaps the reason we all received it so well had to do with its simplicity and maybe the fact it doesn’t feel like a Wild Turkey product. Wait! Before you throw that brick at me, just know that there are people out there who dislike Wild Turkey’s flavor profile. But those same people absolutely love the RR13 profile. This speaks highly to the blenders that put this series together.
Unfortunately, the 2025 version has lost a lot of the magic the original five batches had, so thanks for not using that one for this year’s Advent, Blake.
As for the scores, read ’em and weep. The 2025 Advent Calendar has a new leader. That seems implausible when you consider we’ve had a Mister Sam and RR1998 bottle in the Advent already. Will anything be able to top this one?
