A few months ago, I was told Wild Turkey would be releasing a Russell’s Reserve Single Barrel Bourbon. On Thursday, Chuck Cowdery reported the bottles should hit stores soon. He’s right. I found a bottle in Louisville.
Interestingly, the bottle is labeled Small Batch Single Barrel. Well, which is it? Small batch or single barrel? Chuck made a great point that Wild Turkey’s parent company, Campari, should be cut some slack for its labeling mishap. “The folks at Campari America, which owns Wild Turkey, still know their way around vodka (Skyy) a little better than they do bourbon, so they can be forgiven for not realizing that “Small Batch Single Barrel” is redundant,” wrote Cowdery, who was featured in Fred’s Friends.
With that said, the Russell’s Reserve Single Barrel is non-chill filtered and 110 proof. What’s not to love?
Russell’s Reserve Single Barrel
Small Batch Single Barrel is not at all redundant. It is contradictory. Small batch means a limited number of barrels mixed together for the bottling. Single Barrel is a single barrel.
You bring up a good point, Douglas. But, there are no legal definitions for small batch or single barrel, so technically we don’t know if it’s redundant or contradictory. So, a brand could dump 15 barrels into a batch and call it single barrel without TTB raising an eyebrow.