What Fishing Taught Master Distiller Eddie Russell About Bourbon

On Montana’s Gallatin River, the Wild Turkey legend found familiar lessons about patience, location and what gets passed from one generation to the next.

Eddie Russell searches for trout on Montana’s Gallatin River, where finding the right spot proved just as important as it is back home in a Kentucky rickhouse. | Kyle Niego, @kyleniego

Eddie Russell missed the first fish that hit his fly on Montana’s legendary Gallatin River that day.

“I was still fishing like I was trying to catch a bass,” the Wild Turkey master distiller confessed back at the lodge. We laughed together about it because I had missed my first fish for the same reason.

After decades perfecting your hookset, swinging hard and fast gets wired in. The reaction doesn’t just disappear because you’re holding a nine-foot fly rod. But both of these ol’ bassin’ guys managed to calm down enough to enjoy a successful day of fly fishing for trout.

By late morning Eddie’s group had left their “warmup” stretch for a classic deep pool with bigger rocks and rapids at both ends. “The perfect little spot,” Eddie said.

Sure enough, that spot produced the biggest fish of the trip: a beautiful cutthroat trout.

After missing his first strike of the day, Russell adjusted from his bass-fishing instincts and eventually landed this cutthroat trout from the Gallatin. | Kyle Niego, @kyleniego

Among the many miles of the glorious Gallatin River, had finding that particular spot made the difference?

Eddie thought so. But knowing where to look was something he’d learned long before arriving in Montana. “I think 100%,” Eddie said. “And I think that started with my grandfather taking us fishing and teaching us the patience. He had to know where those fish were…”

It's also the idea behind the special bourbon release Eddie and his son Bruce brought to Big Sky.

Finding the Honey Hole in the Rickhouse

The Russells chose Montana to serve as an epic backdrop for the introduction of Camp Nelson D, the fifth release in the Russell's Reserve Single Rickhouse series. Each of these rare bourbons is bottled from a small batch of barrels from one location in a single rickhouse (the warehouse where bourbon is aged in barrels). The premise is that the exact location of the building, and the location of the barrel within that building, shapes what ends up in the glass.

“Every rickhouse has a different sort of microclimate—top, middle and bottom,” Eddie said. “Like one of the warehouses that Bruce really loves, it sits right on the cliff above the Kentucky River, and it's sort of in this valley that gets a lot of air. That air is what you need to work that whiskey in and out of that wood. So it brings out big, bold tastes.”

Five Russell’s Reserve Single Rickhouse releases were poured side by side, including the new Camp Nelson D, allowing the influence of different aging locations to be compared. | Kurt Mazurek

Camp Nelson D sits at the highest elevation of the rickhouses in the series, and therefore gets a lot of that airflow Eddie described. I tasted the new Camp Nelson D release side by side with the four earlier releases, and bold is an accurate description. But it’s not bold in an aggressive way, it’s bold like it isn’t going to sneak past your senses. There’s classic bourbon vanilla and sweetness, but it’s packed with notes like baked apple, cinnamon, clove, and rye bread, with a medium-long finish of spices, pepper and oak.

What Gets Passed Down

Eddie Russell and his son Bruce on the Gallatin River. Eddie learned to fish from his grandfather then passed that love of the water on to Bruce. | Kyle Niego, @kyleniego

The Russells’ fishing tradition can be traced back to Eddie’s grandfather, a lock master on the Kentucky River. “He would take each one of the grandkids fishing in the summertime. He just had a little jon boat with paddles, and he'd paddle you around. And, you know, that was part of our life was being around that water.”

Interestingly, Eddie's father, bourbon legend Jimmy Russell, never took to fishing. "He doesn't even like the water," Eddie said.

Eddie’s son Bruce was always the computer kid at school, but he surprised his dad with his early love of fishing. “A lot of my core memories growing up would be out on the boat with my dad, my uncle, or we would do family vacations on a big houseboat down at the lake and go fishing. You'd almost have to drag me home, because I just love being out fishing.”

Bruce describes his dad on the water as a different man from the master distiller he sees at work. “In the distillery, he is more talkative. He's running around and doing a million different things.”

But when he’s fishing, “He don't talk a lot. He doesn't mind to just sit, and chill. And the only time you'll see him get upset is if we don't have lunch. On the water is Dad in his element. Fishing is actually more, I think, of his true self,” Bruce said.

Three Hours and 55 Minutes

Eddie Russell, left, telling fishing stories with his son Bruce and the author during a conversation in Big Sky, Montana. | Kurt Mazurek

Bruce began his own career at the distillery as a summer tour guide. He remembers he committed the script to memory and quickly discovered he got better tips by letting guests know he was Eddie’s son and Jimmy’s grandson.

When Eddie heard good reports about his son’s work, he decided to take the tour for himself. Bruce said, “Afterward he said to me, ‘Well, you don’t know that much.’ I said, ‘What do you mean? I got every fact right.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, but that’s all you know. You know what we’re doing, but not why we’re doing it.’”

The next afternoon, Eddie shared his knowledge with his son for four hours straight while Bruce scribbled in a college notebook he still keeps.

“I've joked, and it's only like half a joke, that if he talked for four hours, it's three hours and 55 minutes more than he talked to me my whole life,” Bruce said. “I went home and told my mom, man, that was awesome. I got to kind of meet my dad that day.”

That afternoon set the course for Bruce Russell's career, and for something more.

“This job is probably the only chance I got to really get to know my dad the way I do now,” Bruce said. “When you're on the road together, when you work together, it forces you to know each other. I got to build a relationship with Dad. I got to form a relationship with my grandfather that I never would have otherwise.”

There’s the real overlap between a trout river in Montana and a rickhouse in Kentucky. Both reward patience and knowing where to look, and both are better shared.

The connection between the Gallatin and a Kentucky rickhouse comes down to location: Whether it’s the biggest trout or the best tasting bourbon, finding the right spot can make all the difference. | Russell's Reserve