The Wild Turkey Complaint Email Full Text

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To: wildturkeybourbon@qualitycustomercare.com
Subject: Wild Turkey Distillery tour.

To the person who is responsible for this –

Dear sir/madam

Over the last week I have had the privilege of completing the bourbon trail along with visiting a handful of non trail distiller’s tours, whilst I have also toured the major Tennessee whiskey producers facilities.

It saddens and disturbs me that I am moved enough to take the time and effort to write this email, as I am, generally, a live and let live/forgiving person. Yet I feel compelled to do so, by the complete and utter awfulness of your tour, when compared to the standard set by your brother and sister distillers. Every distiller does things differently, which is how visiting over a dozen places that follow a fairly standard process remains interesting. And the constants on each of these tours is a mix of warmth, charm, information, history, education, friendliness and a sense of love for what they do.

By contrast, your tour is impersonal, sterile, antiseptic, dismissive and feels more like a production facility inspection than a peek inside your doors.

I am not sure where to start my list of disappointments, nonetheless they are detailed below, in the hope that the what appear to be corporate  protocols and practices you follow might yet be modified. At every other Distillery that employs a bus driver we have been introduced to them. On yours we were not. A seemingly small thing but it was a hint to what was to follow.

Your tour gives little to no history of WT.  I infer that visitors are supposed to get all that information from the new history wall in the visitor’s  centre. Outside of the arrogance to think a passive exhibition can replace an interactive and open human, your tour is robbed of any and all context, and the WT sorry simply disappears.

To add to a written comment card I submitted BEFORE my tour, (and therefore whilst in an open mood), your history wall is littered with grammatical and syntax errors. It is unprofessional in the extreme – I cannot imagine that this has not been noticed to date, so your intransigence in not rectifying it hints at much.

At some point I was informed of how new and fantastic the new structure is and how you won a design award for it – you may have won something for the structure, but as for the content you win diddly squat. And winning for a modern design speaks volumes for the disconnection you have from your history and roots. Even if you can be ascribed style points, they become the embodiment of, and exacerbate the lack of substance behind it.

The tour itself is perfunctory.

Get on the bus,  follow a guide to spot A,  who gives his individualised version of script B, get back on the bus now.

AT NO point where we asked if we had questions – whether this is due to indifference or hiding due to a lack of knowledge I cannot tell, but it is abysmal behaviour. Even worse, our group drifted a little bit apart, with people taking photos and such, yet our guide never once waited for us to reassemble before launching into his spiel. He walked ahead of the group, and once 4 or 5 people were close he would start talking, to the extent that I suspect more than half of group missed more than half the tour. I suppose he considered talking a few decibels above conversation level sufficient to reach stragglers.

We were the last tour of the day, so the bottling lines had finished for the day. Despite a bunch of bravado about how impressive and new your facilities were, along with the implication of being secretive as no photos is allowed in that section, I question the decision not to align tours with production hours so your prowess can be seen in action. Otherwise you simply display a large warehouse of machines – it is reminiscent of “all talk no action”. There may be commercial reasons to strangle the two, but from a tour perspective visitors should be informed of this disparity beforehand, and perhaps the last your could be offered at a small discount as recompense.

Penultimately, I have never experienced a guide silently holding on to the handrail on the bus, which happened on the trip back to the visitors centre. If your tour guides give an air of exhaustion, detachment and desolation that is more commonly seen on mass transit, it cannot be helpful to your cause.

Finally, the tasting. Whilst understanding the legal limits of 1 oz per person, parading 10 or 12(?) products and then offering only 2 trains is, at best, smarmy. Everywhere else 2 x half oz can be happily swapped for 3 x a third oz or 4 x a quarter oz, and the 1 oz per person limit is liberally interpreted. But not with you. 2 tastings only, no variations, and the pervading experience is one of people hiding behind bureaucracy than applying a guideline.

In my mind there is no doubt that this will be the most really and literally defended complaint, yet if you do so, you will only convince me more and more that WT is a soulless corporate entity, more concerned with style, image and perception than actually making a product that they care, and are proud, about.

If you have read this far, thank you.

I do not generally write emails like this, and I know I have been both somewhat scathing and emotive, which can be difficult to accept. Particularly as I don’t really think this is the image you intend to present. Our at least I hope so.

The best advice I can give you is to take yourself and your team on a fact finding mission. Go unannounced to your competitors and listen to what they say and show, and feel the grace, hospitality and love they have for what they do. They not just love what they do, but they also educate, show points of difference in a respectful way, and humbly put their product below the mode of making it.

I learned something at every single place I visited, except yours, whether it be by presentation, my question, or the question of another.

Simply put, your tour, when compared to everyone else’s, has driven me to completely eschew WT in the future. I will find any competitor’s product from now on, regardless of price or marketing. I value the family and artisan aspect of bourbon making, now more than ever, and you evince none of that.

Ultimately, the tour as it stands does a disservice to the association you belong to which markets the “Bourbon trail”,  to Kentucky, to bourbon, bourbon lovers, but most hurtfully to the huge amounts of people that live, breathe and love your industry. For a field that prides itself on its family feel, WT is demonstrably showing itself as the arrogant, brash, materialistically driven member who puts is own self-aggrandisement and ego above all. And does that with complete and utter disregard to those that travel and give of their time and money to witness what you do.

It is shameful to the extreme.

I expect little reaction to this, for the statistics will tell you there are always disgruntled visitors. I actually write this, not as an act of disgruntlement, which would be all about MY experience, but from a sense of duty and responsibility to help prevent you falling down an awful path. Because it would be easier to slag you off than confront you. Because I fear the damage you do. Because I care.

I hope you listen. And I am more than willing and happy to discuss this further should you wish to. To whit, in addition to my written contacts that your already have, my phone number is 626-265-0000.

Yours sincerely

Valdis Mezdreis

Written on an android phone!