Yet it nearly disappeared from American barrooms and from the national consciousness.
It used to be the signature whiskey of the United States. George Washington distilled it. Men fought over it in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. Classic cocktails like the manhattan, the Sazerac and the Ward 8 were invented for it. Humphrey Bogart swigged it. But the rise of vodka, bourbon and single- malt scotch, along with the decline of the distilling industry in the Northeast, the stronghold of rye production, turned rye into a relic.
For decades, it clung tenuously to life, barely preserved by a couple of distilleries that would not let it lapse. A dedicated search might have turned up no more than a few dusty bottles in downtrodden liquor stores. Many people came to believe that Canadian whiskey was synonymous with rye, though Canadian generally contained a smaller proportion of rye than U.S. rules mandate.
Now though, in a turnabout, the prospects for rye have brightened considerably. Fueled by the same sense of curiosity and geeky connoisseurship that gave birth to the microbrew industry, the single-malt avalanche and myriad small-batch bourbons, rye has been resurrected by whiskey lovers who want to preserve its singular, almost exotic essence.
Unlike bourbon, which is characteristically sweet, smooth and rounded, rye has a dry, jangly, brash nature. Its spicy flavors practically dance their way through the mouth. In its simplest form, rye is a little grassy and sour, much like rye bread. With age, it becomes more complex and subtle, weaving spice and caramel flavors over and through the grassiness. Yet it retains its angularity, never quite losing its edginess. A manhattan, made as originally conceived - with rye instead of bourbon - is a completely different cocktail, dynamic rather than soothing.
You can still find the scant brands that kept rye going in the dim-and- smoky rye-and-ginger years - Old Overholt, Jim Beam, Wild Turkey, Rittenhouse and a few others. But the real fun now is in the high-end, small- production whiskeys aged for a decade or two that cost $100 a bottle or more.
Finding these whiskeys is another matter. For a recent rye sampling, we barely managed to scrape together 15 bottles.
Yet the small number out there ensured that our tasting would include most of the great rye whiskeys of the world. Florence Fabricant and I were joined for the tasting by David Wondrich, drinks columnist for Esquire magazine, and Lew Bryson, managing editor of Malt Advocate magazine.
If rye has been reborn, why is so little of it available? For the simple reason that whiskey, like great wine, takes time to make well. To put it another way, the whiskey producers were caught with their pants down. In the last decade, the thirst for rye began to rise but production did not keep pace, so demand now far outstrips production.
"You have to age the stuff," Wondrich said. "Six years ago, when they should have been putting it in barrels, they didn't. They're just getting to it now."
As a result, finding the best rye whiskeys has become something of a detective game. Two sources account for most of the rye brands sold today: distillers, of course, who age and bottle their own production, and independent bottlers, who scour the countryside looking for stray barrels of whiskey, which they acquire, bottle and resell under brands that they own.
Our No1 whiskey, for example, the 18- year-old Black Maple Hill Single Barrel, came from CVI Brands, a distributor in San Carlos, California, that forages among the world's distilleries, looking for well-aged barrels of whiskeys that have been set aside for some reason and that the distiller is willing to sell. But even with CVI's connections, it's not easy to turn up aged barrels of rye.
"It's becoming impossible now," said Paul Joseph, CVI's president, who guards his sources carefully. He refused to say who produced the Black Maple Hill, a complex, rich whiskey. Fair enough. Aficionados spend an enormous amount of time trying to trace the origin of whiskeys sold by independent bottlers like CVI. Fortunately for their search, not that many distillers make rye whiskey, nor did they 18 years ago, and most of those distilleries are in Kentucky, where rye is but an afterthought to the big-business bourbons.
One significant exception was our No.2 rye, the Old Potrero Straight Single Malt, intense and grassy enough to be reminiscent of Irish whiskey, but with an overlay of peppermint, spice and fruit. Old Potrero comes from Anchor Distilling in San Francisco, an offshoot of the Anchor Brewing Company, which lovingly recreates historic whiskey styles, like this, aged in what Old Potrero calls the 19th-century style, using charred oak barrels. For its 18th- century style, Old Potrero uses lightly toasted barrels instead. Old Potrero's 18th-century was the only whiskey in the tasting that we didn't much care for. We found it oddly sour and very hot.
Old Potrero is unusual in another regard. It is distilled only from 100 percent rye malt. To be called rye whiskey, U.S. law requires that no less than 51 percent rye be used, malted or unmalted. The rest of the blend can come from corn, wheat, barley or other grains.
In our top 10, we had three 21-year-old ryes. These were also the most expensive bottles in the tasting. We especially liked the complexity of the Classic Cask ($110) and the Hirsch Selection ($120).
The Rittenhouse Single Barrel ($140) was also complex, but had an eye-searing heat that required the addition of a little water to mellow it out. By contrast, Rittenhouse's standard $17 rye was deliciously pure and a great deal. Our best value, though, was the six- year-old Sazerac for $30, an exceptionally smooth whiskey that accented rye's grassy side.
By Eric Asimov
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