Summit Sips

It’s Whiskey
It may seem like a broad category with all of the different styles made throughout the world, but once you understand the basic steps of production, whiskey isn’t so hard to understand. In fact, knowing even a little about how it’s made or where it comes from should help you recognize the different characteristics that transform its flavor and what you should expect when trying different styles.

Before prohibition, when a customer asked for “rye”, everyone knew what to pour. Today, many Americans would mistake this for a piece of bread. It’s no wonder there is confusion—whiskey has many different names. Whether you drink rye, bourbon or Scotch, Irish versus Canadian, blended or single-malt—all whiskey is basically the same product. But I would incite feverish debate (if not downright war) to foolishly claim they all taste the same. Subtle differences in the grain used, the barrel aging, the origin, the type of distillation and even the water can have a tremendous impact on the resulting flavor. Many of these factors even have legal implications on how the bottle can be labeled.

Those of you who followed my Kentucky bourbon tour might remember that whiskey in all of it’s forms is essentially fermented grain (beer) that undergoes one or more distillation cycles to capture and concentrate the alcohol. This alcohol distillate is then placed into barrels where it draws its color and most of its flavor from the wood. After it has reached maturity, a decision is made to bottle it, sometimes blending several barrels together or mixing it with neutral spirits to achieve a specific flavor profile.

Depending on what grains (the mash) are used to make the beer, whiskies can earn different names. For instance, in addition to several other important requirements, in order to call a whiskey “bourbon” the mash must contain at least 51% corn. By the same token, a mash bill that lists at least 51% rye can be labeled as a “straight rye whiskey”.

Geography has obviously influenced the choice of grains used to make whiskey, but distillers today carefully adhere to recipes that produce a spirit with specific and consistent flavors. Whiskey that contains rye is known for its bolder character and is sometimes described as having a spicy flavor when compared to other whiskies. This has made rye an ideal standout in mixed cocktails where it is used in popular drinks like the Manhattan, the Sazerac and the Old Fashioned. So, when Prohibition nearly obliterated whiskey production in the US, scofflaws and bootleggers turned to Canadian sources and to moonshiners to fill their demand, and quality American rye all but disappeared.

However, a small family business in Iowa chose to become outlaws and continued to produce their rye illegally. Templeton Rye supplied product to Al Capone’s gang who in turn smuggled the precious goods into speakeasies in Chicago, New York, and even as far west as California. Templeton became known as “the good stuff”.

More Rye Please
At the end of Prohibition, many distilleries had closed down. Even now, there are relatively few brands of rye available with perhaps only a dozen different names on US shelves. Fortunately, that is slowly changing as Americans are once again rediscovering rye whiskey. Today, Templeton uses their prohibition recipe and high quality ingredients to produce a small batch product with limited distribution and very high demand. It seems that “the good stuff” is still an appropriate way to describe it—that is, if you can find any.

As with any aged product, there is significant lag between initial production and final sale. Templeton Rye enjoys

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