Last Night's Tipple

Before Prohibition, rye whiskey was the American whiskey. It outsold Bourbon, and it was the spirit that American distilling was principally known for. There were dozens of distilleries in Maryland and Pennsylvania primarily making rye. Almost all of them were killed by Prohibition. After it ended, distilleries made a conscious decision to emphasize Bourbon rather than rye for three principal reasons. First, more Kentucky distilleries survived than Pennsylvania and Maryland distilleries, and Kentucky distilleries had never made much rye. Second, most distilleries no longer had any aging stocks of whiskey, so they had to make and age new spirits before they could sell anything. They therefore had a very large financial incentive to get the new distillate to market as quickly as possible, and young Bourbon is typically more palatable than young rye. Third, Prohibition had changed American's tastes in liquor. A lot of the liquor smuggled into the country during Prohibition had been light-bodied blended Canadian Whisky, and American drinkers took to it. Bourbon could hardly be called light-bodied, but it is less massive and brooding typically than rye whiskey and was therefore a better fit with American palates in 1933 than was rye. And so rye whiskey largely died out in the United States by the 1980s.

In recent years, though, it has come back with a vengeance. It is certainly no threat to overtake Bourbon as the American whiskey of choice anytime soon, but all major distilleries now have rye whiskey products, all of which I've tried have been at least very good. Wild Turkey has Wild Turkey 101 proof straight rye, Jim Beam produces both Jim Beam rye (in the bottle with the bright yellow label) and Old Overholt, and Heaven Hill has various Rittenhouse rye bottlings. Buffalo Trace had the Antique Collection Sazerac 18 year old that I wrote about yesterday and the 13 year old Van Winkle Family Reserve Rye, but both of those are rather expensive boutique bottlings. Fortunately, they decided to come out with plain old Sazerac Straight Rye Whiskey (colloquially called "Baby Saz"). There is no age statement on the bottle, but I believe that it's around 6 years old. It's a typical rye whiskey, with the characteristic rye fruitiness and spiciness on the nose, along with a bit of mustiness that I've heard described as the way a rickhouse smells. With time in the glass, it also develops a heavy vanilla aroma, but this does not predominate as it often does in Bourbons. On the palate, it has the typical rye spiciness and a little bit of alcoholic burn. There's also some bitterness, but pleasant bitterness, not bad.