Vintage '90s 101-proof meets 16-year modern luxury in a side-by-side tasting on the Black and Brown Podcast.
TSR’s very own OJ Lima recently returned to North Carolina to join our good friends on the Black and Brown Podcast for their latest episode. OJ came bearing gifts for a special side-by-side tasting. The crew put the newly released Austin Nichols Archives Gold Foil Edition—a 16-year, 120-proof release crafted by Associate Master Blender Bruce Russell—head-to-head against a vintage Wild Turkey Austin Nichols 8-Year-Old 101-Proof Bourbon from the 1990s. Sampling a modern high-end release alongside an old-school classic highlighted the enduring allure of old dusties as well as how Bruce Russell is building on his grandfather's legacy at Wild Turkey.
The comparison offers a lens into how bourbon distilling has evolved over the decades. Old-school distilling relied on lower barrel entry proofs, longer maturation cycles in legacy rickhouses, and vintage copper stills at the former Austin Nichols distillery. In contrast, modern operations leverage advanced climate monitoring, refined filtration, and higher entry proofs for greater output and consistency. Because these vintage flavor profiles cannot be easily replicated today, demand for late-20th-century dusties has skyrocketed across premier auction houses like Sotheby's and Unicorn Auctions, transforming vintage bottles from forgotten liquor store leftovers into prized collector assets fetching thousands on the secondary market.
