Rye
While bourbon is considered America’s native spirit, rye was actually the favored whiskey among her earliest colonists and continued to be popular well into the 1800s, especially in northeastern states like Maryland and Pennsylvania. George Washington even famously distilled rye at his Mount Vernon estate in Virginia. By U.S. law, rye whiskey must be made from a mash of at least 51% rye (with corn and malted barley typically rounding out the remainder of the mashbill). Rye must adhere to the same production standards as bourbon: aged in new, charred oak containers, distilled to no more than 160 proof, entered into barrel at no more than 125 proof, and bottled at a minimum of 80 proof. A straight rye whiskey must be aged for at least two years. Rye whiskey production largely ceased in the U.S. after Prohibition, despite its popularity with America’s nascent cocktail culture at the time — although rye has always been popular in Canada, and rye remains a major component in many Canadian whiskeys today. The resurgence of American whiskey in the late 1990s and an explosion in the popularity of craft cocktails around the same time has launched a revival in rye whiskey production — and consumption — in America.
Top Rye Whiskey Posts:
Knob Creek Rye
WhistlePig Straight Rye Whiskey 10 Years Old
Woodford Reserve Rye
This 2020 release of Michter’s Toasted Barrel Rye almost slipped through the cracks here at Drinkhacker, but we’re squeezing it in here before the end of the year. This bottling, in line with all the ...
Axe and the Oak Distillery in Colorado Springs, Colorado began as the passion project of five friends with a love of good whiskey. It’s unclear how many of the original crew are still involved in ...
A new Single Barrel Special Release has arrived from Jack Daniel’s, and this 2020 offering is a little different than what JD usually puts out. Namely, it’s not a Tennessee Whiskey but rather a rye, ...
We’re seven years into WhistlePig’s “Boss Hog” releases, and they keep getting stranger. If you thought Boss Hog 6 — distilled using sake-like fermentation techniques and finished in umeshu wine barrels — was something different, ...
This year, Washington, D.C.’s One Eight Distilling added to their in-house portfolio of “District Made” spirits with two new rye whiskey additions, a bottled-in-bond rye and this bottle, an extremely limited single barrel offering bottled ...
One of the most venerable names in rye whiskey has received a major refresh: Old Overholt has been rebranded, relabeled, and reproofed, now hitting 86 proof instead of 80, as it has been for years. ...
We’ve been following Louisville’s Rabbit Hole Distillery since they first hit the crowded American whiskey scene a few years back. The original core lineup included a rye whiskey, dubbed Boxergrail, and now a select few ...
Holland, Michigan-based Coppercraft has had its sights set on being a “grain to glass” distillery since 2012, and today the operation makes at least 8 products. Coppercraft is still working to get there, though, as there’s ...
Tennessee-based Chattanooga Whiskey continues rolling out expressions, its latest — a permanent addition to the company’s lineup — is Chattanooga Whiskey 99 Rye Malt (aka Chattanooga Whiskey Tennessee Rye Malt). This is distilled by Chattanooga, ...
I’m not going to lie: The flood of releases, both bourbons and ryes and all named after race horses, is daunting and confusing. There were at least 6 special editions in 2018, and 4 so ...
