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
The pandemic mucked with Michter’s release schedule of its annually released 10 year old single barrel whiskeys this year. Unusually, samples of each arrived simultaneously at Drinkhacker HQ, so we’re taking the rare opportunity to ...
Rare Breed has long been one of Wild Turkey’s premium bourbon bottlings, the big selling point being that it’s bottled uncut, at barrel proof. Now the Rare Breed brand is extending to that other American ...
Kooper Family Whiskey is a Dripping Springs, Texas-based distillery that we last visited in 2016 when we reviewed its (now discontinued) 100% Rye release. Today we take a fresh look at Kooper’s current lineup, which ...
If you recall Bender’s Rye, you know half the team behind Bender & Cohen, which recently added the latter’s name to the brand for Bender’s “experimental playground,” which will be used for oddball, small batch ...
For three years running now, the folks at Iowa’s Templeton have released a barrel-proof expression of their well-known rye, a sourced whiskey from MGP made with its trademark 95% rye and 5% malted barley mash. ...
Here’s a little surprise that recently hit the market. On the heels of a less-than-stellar rye — and three oddball variants — Beam-owned Basil Hayden’s has taken this horse upmarket, slapping the original, un-gimmicked version ...
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 ...
