John Wayne, star of the silver screen in classic westerns and war films, is such an icon in Hollywood that the mere mention of his name still echoes an aura of fortitude today. “The Duke” may have been classic Hollywood’s most memorable gunslinger, spewing classic movie quotes like “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do,” but when it came to doing things behind the scenes, what this man did was curl up to his favorite brand of bourbon whiskey: Wild Turkey.
Wild Turkey’s origins date as far back as 1851, when Irish brothers James and John Ripy arrived in Kentucky to distill and sell whiskey through their grocery partner, Austin Nichols. In 1869, they opened their distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, on Wild Turkey Hill — however, the location was not its eponym. The Wild Turkey bourbon brand didn’t come to be until 1940, after Nichols had taken control of the distillery and scaled it into a bigger business. It was one of the distillery executives, Thomas McCarthy, who suggested the Wild Turkey name after pouring the bourbon out for his friends on a hunting trip — as they were in search of wild turkey.
Meanwhile, in Hollywood, California, Wayne started becoming a star around the studios, and as a fan and collector of whiskey, he’d often have bottles of bourbon shipped to the set. Amongst them was what he considered his favorite, Wild Turkey, an American-made bourbon for a true American icon.