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
At one point, Nashville-based Corsair had roughly 20 expressions of whiskey, gin, moonshine, and even absinthe on the market. To say that Corsair’s attentions were scattered might be a bit of an understatement. That changed ...
Two new expressions from the burgeoning Chicken Cock brand, a straightforward Kentucky rye and more unusual beer barrel-finished rye. Production details — and our thoughts — all follow. Chicken Cock Straight Rye -A Kentucky Straight ...
They may be referred to as Barrell Bourbon, but Joe Beatrice and crew blend more than just America’s native spirit (see here and here, for example). It took a few years, but finally in 2017, Barrell introduced ...
Waco’s Balcones Distilling is hardly a sleepy operation, with new whiskeys popping up in its portfolio from year to year and a seemingly constant evolution in the whiskeys themselves. Balcones has had a private selection program ...
Virginia-based Ragged Branch is a craft distillery that makes bourbon — and lots of it: The brand has five different bourbon expressions — and one rye — all produced in house and aged for at ...
The Standard Proof lineup is from the same Tennessee-based company that makes Barsmith Grenadine, and here the operation turns its flavoring attention to real spirits, not just sugar syrups. The collection of six rye whiskeys ...
Breweries and distilleries are doing their best to acknowledge our trying times, and Virginia’s Catoctin Creek recently dropped its own charity-focused whiskey, a 100% rye aged in leftover casks from its barrel select program, with ...
Wheel Horse is a sourced whiskey distilled at Kentucky’s O.Z. Tyler — and in fact it’s the first rye (95% rye, 5% malted barley) to come out of O.Z. (and its forebears) since the company ...
Kentucky’s New Riff prides itself on putting a “new riff” on tried-and-true American whiskey traditions. As more and more craft distilleries push the creative limit to stand out on the shelves, these “riffs,” like their ...
Sagamore Spirit‘s latest limited edition is a rye finished in French apple brandy barrels for more than 11 months. As with prior Sagamore bottlings, it’s sourced from MGP with no additional information offered. It’s not ...
