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It’s strange to have four participants guess the same bottle, but that’s what happened with the December 17th Slacker’s Advent Calendar. Rather than give some sort of exposition, let’s dive in to the group’s guesses to see which bottle was on everyone’s mind:
As you can see, the common guess here is “Russell’s Reserve 15yr.” In a close second was Buffalo Trace with three participants guessing it was distilled there. The only issue with the Buffalo Trace guesses was they didn’t have any kind of commonality between them. One participant thought it reminded him of a wheated bourbon, one thought it was a younger Stagg Jr single barrel and another thought it was something from the BTAC line (a sort of catch-all since the BTAC line has 3 different types of whiskey).
The remaining guesses all had an air of high-rye character about them. How did that all pan out in the tasting descriptors? You be the judge:
One interesting observation is the higher-than-usual amount of spice notes we found. There were also a high number of fruit notes recorded along with 3 participants saying they identified “wine” notes on the palate. And not that I’m spoiling the reveal for you, but this bottle was definitely not wine finished – or finished at all.
Another thing I want to point out is that for the first time this Advent, there were zero participants who found a butterscotch note on the nose or palate. I personally find butterscotch to be this sort of “unicorn” flavor or scent that few bourbons possess (along with blackberry), so I’m always a little bit skeptical when would hear a participant claim they tasted or smelled it. I obviously can’t say they’re dead wrong, but I feel as if they were mistaking it for caramel or brown sugar (which are much more common).
Moving past all of that, this bottle seems to cover all notes from the tasting spectrum pretty equally. What whiskey is this balanced? It’s time for a reveal:
December 17th Reveal
Today’s bottle was one that many participants have been guessing since the first day of the 2025 Advent. It was…
… The new Russell’s Reserve Single Rickhouse Camp Nelson E! This is the 2025 release that has been hard to come by so far. I predict much more of these will be hitting the market so we should see more reviews out there soon. Of note, I had tasted this bottle prior to the blind Advent pour and found it to be very good – but just shy of the greatness that Master’s Keep Beacon was. However, it was way better than this year’s Russell’s Reserve 13. Thanks, Jake!
And how did the participants rate this bottle? It turns out quite highly! It is now setting in 3rd place out of 13 bottles (with Kentucky Owl Batch 9 above it and Mister Sam Batch 1 below it). Not bad! It also cements Wild Turkey as one of the most popular distilleries submitted in this year’s Advent Calendar – that is, unless the next 3 bottles are all from the same distillery. We’ll find out soon!
