The Cut — July 7, 2026 — SE02E72 — E.H. Taylor Jr. BiB 2026: The Man Who Passed the Law, $69.99

This is The Cut.

Honey and vanilla on the nose. Bold caramel and rye spice through the middle. A long, warming finish with toasted oak that doesn’t let go. That’s Wild Turkey Rare Breed Barrel Proof — uncut, unfiltered, arriving at retail this week.

I’m John from Chasing the Unicorn Podcast.

Here’s where we want to end up: Wild Turkey Rare Breed Barrel Proof 2026 Batch 02 in your hands at $59.99, bought before the current distribution window closes.

Here’s what makes it tricky. Rare Breed Barrel Proof moves through the three-tier system on the distributor’s schedule, not yours. No lottery, no app notification, no press release. Bottles land at retail and clear before most drinkers realize the window opened. The people paying more on the secondary in six weeks aren’t uninformed. They just assumed the bottle would wait.

Here’s the move. Find a retailer carrying Wild Turkey standard allocation this week and buy a bottle of 2026 Batch 02 at $59.99.

Two things make this call clean. First: what Eddie Russell’s barrel-entry commitment produces at full concentration. Wild Turkey has run 107-proof barrel entry since 1954 — lower than most Kentucky distilleries then, still lower today. Lower entry proof means more water-soluble compounds pulled from the wood across the aging cycle. More wood integration. More complexity per year. At 117.2 proof, Batch 02 arrives in your glass at near-barrel concentration — the direct output of that 70-year production philosophy, nothing diluted.

Second: what the TTB COLA clearing this week actually signals. Three federal label approvals came through in 48 hours — Rare Breed Batch 02, E.H. Taylor Jr. Single Barrel Bottled-in-Bond 2026, and Maker’s Mark Cask Strength Batch 02. A COLA review isn’t a press release. It’s a federal audit of label claims. What’s on the bottle is what’s in the bottle. At $59.99 for an uncut, non-chill-filtered 117.2-proof Wild Turkey, Rare Breed Batch 02 is the strongest value in that group.

Three bottles on this week’s list. Rare Breed Barrel Proof leads — that’s the buy. Find it at any major account running Wild Turkey standard allocation. You’ve got three to four weeks before the current batch clears distribution.

Also on the list: E.H. Taylor Jr. Single Barrel Bottled-in-Bond 2026 at $69.99. One barrel, one distilling season, federal warehouse supervision, 100 proof — and the label named after the man who lobbied Congress to pass the Bottled-in-Bond Act in 1897. No lottery at most accounts this cycle.

The high end is quiet this week. No new Hunt entry above $200. That’s the honest picture — we’d rather say so than pad the list.

Full read on all three is in today’s Cut Daily on our website. Free.

A word of caution. Barrel proof means something different at 117.2 than it does at 100. The price of being wrong here isn’t paying too much — it’s drinking it wrong and writing off a bottle that deserved better. Add three drops of water to your first pour. At this proof, the heat arrives before the flavor does. Water backs it down, and what comes forward — the honey, the caramel, the rye spice — is exactly what earned the buy call. The rule of thumb worth keeping: the higher the proof, the more the first pour matters. Get that right and the bottle delivers. Miss it and you’re buying heat, not whiskey.

One more thing before we close. Today’s American Whiskey Industry Brief has the full side-by-side — Wild Turkey Rare Breed Barrel Proof 2026 Batch 02 against Russell’s Reserve 13-Year Single Barrel 2026. Both cleared federal review this week. Both hitting retail in the same window. Separated by $20 in MSRP and up to seven years of age. We have the tasting notes, the value comparison, and the verdict on which bottle makes the stronger argument for the Russell family’s production philosophy. We’re not calling it here.

That’s The Cut. Follow the show wherever you listen, so tomorrow’s brief finds you first. The full American Whiskey Industry Brief is at patreon.com/ChasingTheUnicornPodcast. I’m John Schuster. Thanks for joining me. Your unicorn is out there.