Austin Nichols Wild Turkey - 1978 Release

The Wild Turkey bourbon brand was created in the early 1940s, with the brand name supposedly conceived when Austin Nichols executive Thomas McCarthy brought some whiskey samples on a turkey-hunting trip. Austin Nichols was a large wholesaler that had begun as grocers Fitts, Martin & Clough in the 1850s but had pivoted to bottling sourced alcohol under their own proprietary brands a few years earlier.

Austin Nichols had no distillery of their own, sourcing bourbons from various producers for their Wild Turkey brand. One of these sources was the Boulevard distillery, which Austin Nichols bought in 1971 and renamed Wild Turkey. Austin Nichols was purchased in 1980 by Pernod Ricard, who sold the Wild Turkey brand and distillery to Campari in 2009. Campari built a new distillery for Wild Turkey on the site in 2011.

Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.

This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.