Believe it or not, it's worth the sky-high prices it commands. Our tester found Siren's Song to be surprisingly sweet and honey-like on the nose, with a taste that was ultra-smooth and full of baking spice (Christmas comes to mind) and pleasant warmth, followed by a long and subtly sweet finish. For 2022, we got The Boss Hog IX: Siren's Song, an ode to Greek mythology's muses that was double-finished in barrels that housed Greek fig nectar and the Greek liqueur Tentura, with both finishes being crafted in-house by Ireland and Rhoades. It always sells out in a flash - even at a whopping $600 MSRP - and go on to fetch thousands on the secondhand market. During the middle of the 1800s, phylloxera devastated France’s vineyards, making Cognacthe main ingredient in the popular Sazerac cocktailhard to come by. Handy, is credited with making frontier life a little less difficult. Designed as basically a Holy Grail rye whiskey, each year the spirit is different while still fulfilling five criteria: single barrel, bottled at proof, powerfully complex, distinctly unique from anything they've done before, and stupendous. One of the brave souls of early American life, Thomas H. The Best Rye Whiskeys Russell’s Reserve 6-Year Small BatchĮvery year for the last nine years, WhistlePig has crafted a special 'Boss Hog' release. We've gathered together our personal favorites as well as some recommended picks from a pair of rye experts from lauded Vermont distillery WhistlePig - Head Blender Meghan Ireland and Head of Whiskey Development/Whiskey Scientist Liz Rhoades - to bring you this list of the best rye whiskeys to buy. Since the late aughts, rye sales have increased by hundreds of percentage points, which has driven the number of ryes on store shelves up in turn. The sweet-toothed, older, bourbon-drinking generation gave way to a generation that reached for more spice and flavor. As recently as 2006, in an article in The New York Times about a potential resurrection, rye survived only “by whiskey lovers who want to preserve its singular, almost exotic essence.” Then Prohibition decreased production and bourbon, produced from corn grown in the newly farmed Midwest, supplanted it as America’s favorite brown liquor.

government, the backlash was such that it led to a rebellion. When rye became the first domestic good taxed by the newly formed U.S. In the late 1700s, distillers in the rye-growing regions of Pennsylvania and Maryland created a market so reliable that rye was used to barter.

At one time in our history, rye, not bourbon, was America’s whiskey.

Thomas h handy