Russell's Reserve 12-year Warehouse D bourbon tastes like rye, costs $300

Russell's Reserve has released the 2026 entry in its Single Rickhouse series, a 12-year-old Kentucky bourbon bottled at 120.8 proof without chill filtration. It sells for $300 a bottle, and master distiller Eddie Russell says it is the first release in the series that blind tasters would bet was a rye.

The whiskey comes from Warehouse D at Camp Nelson, the site the brand's Single Rickhouse releases have all used since the series began in 2022. Camp Nelson is widely considered to yield some of the distillery's best whiskey because of its climate and weather conditions.

The barrels for this edition were drawn from floors one, three, four, five and six of the rickhouse, a wider spread than any earlier Single Rickhouse release used. The first floor is unusual territory for the brand, and Russell said the team does not typically pull from it.

"We don't typically draw from the first floor," Russell said. "But some of the barrels we tasted down there contributed an earthy character that helped build the spicy, rye-like profile we found ourselves chasing. Once we realized what was developing, we leaned into it."

That earthy first-floor character pushed the whiskey toward a flavor Russell believes reads as rye rather than bourbon in a blind tasting, the first time a release in this series has done so. The spiciness on the palate is unmistakable, and the higher proof brings real heat.

The heat is balanced by sweet and fruited layers that keep the whiskey from one-note force. The brand's own notes describe vanilla, maple, tobacco, baked apple, plum, cherry and toasted almond, a list that suggests the spice rides over a deeper, sweeter core.

Warehouse D carries personal history for Russell. It was the first warehouse he worked in when he started at the distillery nearly half a century ago, which makes this bottling both a technical statement about terroir and a nod to his own first years on the job.

The series itself is built around the idea that where a whiskey matures shapes what it becomes. While much talk of terroir in whiskey centers on grain, the Single Rickhouse line focuses on maturation, letting one warehouse and its floors demonstrate how environment leaves a mark on a bourbon.

The line began with Camp Nelson C in 2022, a bourbon aged at least ten years in a warehouse at Camp Nelson. Every release since has drawn its barrels from the Camp Nelson site, with proofs and ages varying from year to year while the location holds constant.

The distillery behind the label

Russell's Reserve is distilled at Wild Turkey, where Eddie Russell oversees production as master distiller. He is the son of the legendary Jimmy Russell, and he created the smaller Russell's Reserve label back in 1998 to mark Jimmy's 45th year at the distillery.

Eddie Russell is now marking the same 45-year anniversary himself this year, which gives the 2026 release an extra layer of timing. The brand has long been known for well-aged yet still affordable bourbon, its ten-year-old expression carrying much of that reputation.

Special editions began appearing a few years ago and quickly became sought after, including 13- and 15-year-old bourbons and the Single Rickhouse series itself. This new release is the priciest end of the brand's range, and its 120.8 proof places it among the most potent bottlings in the lineup.

What $300 buys

At $300, this is an expensive bottle of bourbon, and secondary-market prices run even higher. The brand's ten-year expression made its name on quality at an approachable figure, so this release deliberately plays a different game, aimed at collectors and Wild Turkey loyalists.

The whiskey is bottled without chill filtration, which keeps more of the oils and texture intact and is a detail pickier drinkers watch for.

We have tracked the category's limited single malts and single-barrel releases across this year, from Laphroaig's returning 15-year-old to Glendronach's 200th-anniversary 56-year-old, and this Russell's Reserve is in the same company of collectible, age-stated bottlings aimed at enthusiasts.

The Single Rickhouse releases have built a following precisely because each one poses the same question: what does this one warehouse, and this set of floors, do to the whiskey? This edition answers with spice and earth, and it is the rye-like answer the series had not quite given before.

Russell has not named the next warehouse or release date for the series, but the pattern of annual Camp Nelson bottlings since 2022 suggests another will follow. For now, the $300 Warehouse D bourbon is the current flag-bearer, and the brand frames it as its spiciest, most rye-forward statement yet.