Hand selected by legendary father-son master distillers Jimmy and Eddie Russell, Russell's Reserve Single Barrel Bourbon is renowned for its quality and can still be found more widely than some of the high age stated special releases. Russell's Reserve barrels are pulled from the center cut, the middle 3-5 floors of Wild Turkey's 7-story rickhouses, which get a good balance of fluctuations in temperature and humidity. They don't give much more info beyond that, but if you're interested in Wild Turkey's laser codes you can sus out a few more details. These codes etched into the back of the bottle just a smidge above the base. LA NA20E1339 - LA codes started in 2024, A20 is January 20th bottling, N is 2025 (M was 2024 - sequential alphabetical), E bottling machine and time of day 1:39PM. This shelf destined bottle doesn't note the location or barrel number, but we know they were pulling from Tyrone F&G (high spice and leather) and Camp Nelson B (sweet w...
Four Roses has long been praised for the quality and consistency of its single barrel editions. They currently release a number of their ten recipes as single barrels, but this is from the original OBSV recipe "standard" bottling that is most prevalent. If you're not familiar with Four Roses recipe codes they follow a structured format: Distillery - "O" for all recipes, meaning distilled at Four Roses Distillery Mash Bill - either "B" (60% Corn, 35% Rye, 5% Barley) or "E"(75% Corn, 20% Rye, 5% Barley) Straight Whiskey - "S" for all editions Yeast Strain - V(Delicate Fruit), K(Spice), O (Rich Fruit, Q(Floral),or F(Herbal). The combination of the two mashes and five yeasts yields 10 possible variations. If your head isn't already spinning, Four Roses also includes the exact warehouse aging location for each single barrel. This one is from Rickhouse TS and has the code 49-3C which means rick/row number 39, tier 3 (height), and pos...