Wild Turkey Master's Keep 17yo

I spent a lot of time before my trip home to Brisbane for Christmas this year deciding which bourbons I would buy while I was in Australia. I knew I wanted to get one of the Master’s Keep series, as WT101 is one of my favourite daily drinkers. In the end I saw all the favourible reviews that Decades got, and the less-than-favourible reviews that MK17 got, and went with the Decades. Luckily I found the 17 at a bar and got to try it anyway. Unlike all my other reviews, this one and the next couple were not blind. Little bit silly given that these would be the best ones to try blind, but it’s a difficult thing to set up properly at a bar.

Source: Poured at The Gresham, Brisbane, Australia.
Setup: Unblind
Drank: Neat, in a Glencairn-style stemmed glass. Rested 5-10 minutes.

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Nose: Funky oak, caramelized herbs. Interesting amount of fennel notes. Seriously decent nose.
Palate: Milky texture, some lingering spice. Apple peel.
Finish: Gamey, funky oak and rye. A good amount of tannins, but it’s not over the top for me. Some fleeting berry notes.
Overall: Well, I like this a heck of a lot more than many other people did, apparently. The funky, almost sour notes are exactly the kind of complexity I like, and with that rye note in there this pushes my buttons.

Rating: 7

Thoughts: I suppose my palate is quite different to many other bourbon reviewers, coming as I do from a background of tasting sour beer, where I would search out the funkier stuff and abundant tannins were totally fine. That made this super interesting for me, and might make me go back to the store to pick up a bottle of this in addition to Decades. I really loved it. On a night where I tasted 3/5 of BTAC, this was a bit of an afterthought—but it surprisingly to me held its own very well. I only wish I could have tasted them all blind to see exactly how it pitted itself up against, for example, ER17.