More Thanksgiving Turkey! Today our dusty is a 1988 Wild Turkey 12 year old. Bottles of the 101 proofer from this era are affectionately known as CGF or Cheesy Gold Foil for obvious reasons.
Wild Turkey 12 year old, 1988, 50.5% abv
The nose is caramel with lemon rind and cinnamon. The palate is a Christmas spice pack with ginger, brown sugar, orange rind and clove; the late palate has some nice oak. It gets minty and medicinal on the finish.
This is certainly a nice bourbon but not one that I think is exceptional. The palate is nice, but the finish is a bit heavy on the mint and medicinal notes. From what I understand, it's very popular among Wild Turkey fans, but I've never been as big a fan of old Turkeys as some folks.
Thanks to Brendan Prouty for the sample.
Happy Thanksgiving, Steve! It's been a while since I've had a WT12, but it used to rank in my top 10, possibly top 5. Over the years though I've definitely grown more fond of the vintage 8 year olds over the CGF. There have been ones I've tasted that I felt were not well balanced. In fact, my first successful hunt of one of these was such a big disappointment that I wrote the QC at WT and they sent me an exceptionally generous compensatory gift (a split 12 for export, and a then, new bottle of American Spirit!!). I couldn't believe it.
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