Quail: TK-102
A Collection of Rare Birds
Original Artwork by Shayna Larsen
Distillate Source Undisclosed heritage distillery
About the Release
A Collection of Rare Birds is a Subtle Spirits Original release consisting of 8 single-barrel bourbons aged 16 years and 2 months. Each was bottled at cask strength, ranging from 113 to 130 proof, and yielded between 35 and 135 bottles.
Each barrel is named after the bird commemorated by the feather on the label – Mallard, Quail, Starling, Hummingbird, Kingfisher, Cardinal, Macaw, and Turkey. Three of the eight were selected by Joshua Thinnes for our email list and general CA distribution, while five were selected by retailers.
Five (5) Collector Edition sets were created. The Collector Edition sets include one of each numbered bottle (8 total bottles) along with a signed and numbered print of each feather artwork piece by Shayna Larsen.
TASTING NOTES
Mallard: TK-101 – 113.4 proof | 69 bottles
Butterscotch, dried stone fruits, wintergreen, blonde tobacco
Quail: TK-102 – 128.2 proof | 99 bottles
Honey Bunches of Oats, dried strawberry, Tahitian vanilla bean
Starling: TK-103 – 120.1 proof | 73 bottles
Milk chocolate, graham cracker, Vicenza leather, raisins
Hummingbird: TK-104 – 121.8 proof | 132 bottles
Apple cider, caramel, candied apples, Ceylon cinnamon
Kingfisher: TK-105 – 128.8 proof | 86 bottles
Intense orchard fruit, dried peach, cured oak
Cardinal: TK-106 – 115.6 proof | 134 bottles
Honeycomb toffee, Butterfinger, funky fruit, book leather
Macaw: TK-107 – 112.4 proof | 110 bottles
Stewed fruit, marzipan, funk, custard
Turkey: TK-108 – 128.2 proof | 35 bottles
Dark chocolate, black currant, licorice, sandalwood
ABOUT THE ART
Shayna Larsen is a watercolor artist based in Boulder, Colorado, known for her soulful wildlife and feather paintings, which feature accents of handmade earth pigments made from crushed stones she collects on her hikes. The feather paintings incorporate metallic paints to capture the iridescent effect of a real bird feather.
The feather theme for this release was almost too obvious, but turned out to be incredibly fitting after discovering the work of Shayna Larsen and her 500 Feathers Project.
Eight feathers commissioned exclusively for Subtle Spirits are now part of Larsen's 500 Feathers Project. Each feather is a 5" x 10" watercolor painted on Saunders Waterford High White 100% cotton archival paper and mounted on a wood panel.
The collaboration with Subtle Spirits invited Shayna to see the feathers in a new, elevated context—reimagining each one as it would live wrapped around a bottle. For this series, she blended her signature loose, painterly style with the precision of her larger works, studying each bird and its symbolism to honor the story behind the spirit it would accompany.
Shayna paints with water as a living element — “the one thing that connects us all” — and creates work that bridges the science and spirit of nature. Her 500 Feathers Project honors this connection and took a deeply personal turn after her father’s passing in 2021. “We used to share a glass of whiskey,” she says, “so having my feather paintings on a whiskey bottle feels like a wink from the universe — as if he’s still right here, raising his glass with us.”
The metallic paints proved quite a challenge to reproduce in the final labels. We had the original unvarnished paintings photographed at three different exposure levels to separate their shifting light refraction and create the unique digital layers needed to re-create a feather's iridescence by adding a special holographic foil layer on top of the ink. When the label is viewed at different angles, the reflected light changes, appearing either muted or iridescent – just like the original paintings.