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A quality bourbon liqueur made with Wild Turkey Kentucky Bourbon and pure honey. The recently revamped packaging looks much better too. American Honey was named as World’s Best Whisky Liqueur three years in a row.
Wild Turkey American Honey Liqueur Review:
To commemorate National Honey Month, and after all my to-ing and fro-ing over the last 6 months or so (see end note) Wild Turkey have finally launched a liqueur based on their well-known Bourbon brand. The liqueur is 35% alcohol by volume (around £24.99 a bottle in the UK), and is made using the same mashbill, barrel types and char levels that produce the Wild Turkey Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. I’ve tried it, and I bought it for just £19 for the bottle. This is way more price-attractive than the American Honey released back in 2003, for example.
The bottle says it is “Aged one year in North American white oak barrels”, so it’s probably not much older than that.
I was very lucky to have this bottle of Wild Turkey American Honey Liqueur hand-delivered to me by the folks at Browster Magazine in another of their magazine bundles, for the purposes of a review and writing a blog posting. I’m really pleased to have another bottle of Wild Turkey to enjoy, but I have to say, I’m disappointed by this new American Honey Liqueur, because I was very confident that it would be a quality, well-thought out product. It’s a disappointed, and I wanted that feeling to last for longer. The color is one thing, the way it looks does not really do it for me, and I have to be careful not to knock it over, and it’s too pretty to look at, but it really is very pretty to look at. I’m enjoying the whiskey, and may be a bit too emotional about the liqueur because I’m not quite sure that it’s really wroth the price.
But let’s not get carried away with the look of this bottle so far, I mean, don’t you think it looks different from, well, other Wild Turkey bottles?
Wild Turkey American Honey Liqueur – Tasting
First Impression:
Initial nose is light-moderate with brown sugar sweet notes, and it smells like honey, it’s nice, but someone has poured honey over the barrel, or put too much in the mix. Honey and bread and pale sugar, with a sweet and subtle violets and spice. It’s a little too heavy on the honey, and perhaps the whiskey is masked too much. A little bit of wet wood, and a little of the cherry finish notes come through – it’s as if I’m nosing something that has just come off the stills.
Taste:
There’s also more honey in the taste than I would have liked, and it’s a tad too sweet for me. A little bit like a budget bacardi, but there is a light oak, with a fresh cask taste. Lovely hint of spice accompanies the liqueur, but the honey just is not coming through as expected. It’s too sweet, too much dark-brown sugar, not enough honey, not a lot of oak. I’m moving on to the second glass, and I just get an overly sweet character. It’s a little too much sugar in this 41.2% ABV liqueur.
like someone put too much honey in the liqueur, and not enough to hide the rye whisky components, just enough to cover them. My tongue knows it tastes different to a regular Whiskey Sour that I would make with Whiskey, and simple syrup. It’s also a bit too sweet and not enough sour.
Drinking Wild Turkey American Honey would be great in a Whiskey Sour if someone added less sugar, more lemon or lime juice, or less of the honey. A Whiskey Sour with more whiskey in it.
Wild Turkey American Honey Liqueur Review
Wild Turkey American Honey Liqueur Drink Recipe
For a cocktail, I’d go with a wild turkey cocktail, or a whisky sour, and use a little less honey than in a typical manhattan, or omit the sugar cube altogether. If you wanted to use this as a sipping liqueur, do yourself a favor and just make a barley water.
Wild Turkey American Honey Liqueur –
My Thoughts on the new release of Wild Turkey American Honey Liqueur.
The Wild Turkey American Honey Liqueur looks great in the tube, but tastes a bit too sugary. It’s a bit too sweet, and needs more honey. It looks great, it’s really a very pretty thing to look at (and taste too). The honey is definitely overpowering what little bourbon character there is, and the oak is OK, but I like it more with less honey and find it too much, and better in a cocktail.
For those who think that I didn’t like Wild Turkey American Honey Liqueur, I quite like it, but it is neither satisfying or exciting to enough to buy again, and not really very different to a typical Barry Honey, or great in a cocktail.
I think Wild Turkey need to conduct another round of focus groups, and make a few changes so there’s more whiskey and less honey, and perhaps more sweetness from honey and less sugar. They’ll also need to rename it to something that people don’t associate with a certain other liqueur brand. Then I’d buy more, and perhaps drink it neat, as it is a nice whiskey, albeit a bit young, unfortunately.
