Rye is not a holiday, it’s a lifestyle.
It’s inevitable, every single ever loving got damned Friday it happens. I get up, pour some coffee and embark on checking in with the online world, and my social media whiskey feed is saturated with people gleefully posting their bottles of Rye whiskey and exhorting me to have a “Happy F-RYE-DAY” as if they just discovered the latest greatest thing.
This hashtag holiday irks me more than “Weller Wednesday,” “Turkey Tuesday,” “Michter’s Monday” or the absurd “single-barrel Saturday.” It’s madness! Madness I say!
There are Scotch drinkers, there are Bourbon drinkers, there are Gin drinkers, there are sad disgusting garbage people that drink Vodka, and there are RYE drinkers.
No one does a hashtag for Scotch Sunday, or Single-Malt January, Vodka Tuesday, or Rum Day All Day.
Rye is the most likely spirit to get the dumb hashtag holiday treatment more than any other.
PEOPLE! Listen to the words coming out of my filthy mouth- RYE IS NOT A HOLIDAY IT’S A GOD DAMNED LIFESTYLE!
Rye Street, Louisiana. Not as dirty as Bourbon Street obvi.
With apologies to my good friends over at Sagamore Spirit (they get a pass, since all they do is Rye), I will never celebrate #fridayryeday because for me, a Rye acolyte, Rye is not to be celebrated on a specific day, but every day.
I drink Rye any and all the days of the week at any fucking given time or place I fucking want.
Rye doesn’t need a specific holiday, or a special day of the week, because frankly I find Rye to be superior to Bourbon.
I know, them’s fightin’ words around here, but allow me to plead my case. Rye is a better style of whiskey for me due to the layers of complexity that its more famous younger cousin doesn’t frequently provide.
Bourbon is rightly celebrated, and Rye is typically mistreated as something one dabbles in. To the masses Rye is the redhead of whiskey- spirited, assumed to be crazy, kept at arms length, never fully embraced, rarely appreciated, and seldom doted on.
I say piss on that. Rye is incredible and it’s time we flat out acknowledge its greatness and stop goofing around with specified days to drink it.
It’s long overdue to stop catering to the incurious Bourbon drinker with “Bourbon drinkers Rye” descriptors.
It’s time that we celebrate the glory of Rye, and stop apologizing for it. Yeah, it’s spicy! Go drink some milk if you can’t handle it.
I know that my defiant stance isn’t a good way to guide people into trying Rye, but this feature isn’t geared to the new folks coming into the best whiskey category there is, it’s geared to you the whiskey insaniac.
Champion the spirit, shout from the mountaintop about the greatness in the glass, but please stop the Bourbon comparisons.
Rye people are just built differently.
My pal Brett says that Rye whiskey is Bourbons older brother, and I find that to be a polite way of saying, “you’ve all forgotten that Rye is the true spirit of the United States (if not North America) and you should feel shame for paying $300 for Elmer.”
Yes, I’ll never miss an opportunity to take a swipe at Buffalo Trace, but Brett is right, it is the true native spirit of the United States.
Bourbon happened much later, so all the Elijah and Evan stories that brands tell you are New Testament shit. The Old Testament is RYE!!
Prior to the passing of the Volstead Act, and in fact all throughout prohibition, Rye was THE whiskey of the land. From private stash to speakeasy, it was ubiquitous.
As we all sadly know today, prohibition shut down most domestic whiskey production, and imports from Canada took over the market with their real McCoy.
After repeal, Rye was on the inexorable decline, many of the legendary distilleries from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York hadn’t survived.
As time wore on, throw in a global war to accelerate things- Bourbon, Scotch, Gin, and Vodka began to take over, Rye having fallen almost completely out of favor.
What the American war in Vietnam would do to Bourbon, Prohibition did to Rye, a self-inflicted own. Thanks a pant-load Carrie Nation.
So many excellent Rye’s are available on the market today, I cannot understand why people chase the allocateds.
Today, Rye whiskey is less than 10% of the entire whiskey market, but it is slowly growing, no doubt ironically helped by the heavy social media push of the hashtag holidays, the cocktail sorcerers who have sustained and resurrected the spirit as the go to cocktail whiskey, and the drinking fans themselves, who are becoming more and more curious about expanding their palates and experiences.
Also, as people get older, their sense of taste diminishes, so hello Rye, the aging Bourbon drinkers retirement plan.
Did you know thatNew Orleans has a long and storied history with Rye? It does, and it’s origins here are interesting.
The original Sazerac cocktail was invented here, but was in fact made with Cognac, not Rye.
Without a disastrous grape crop having taken place in France, Rye might’ve never taken off here at all.
Misfortune in France, brought a shortage of Cognac, so eager and innovative New Orlenians quickly replaced the missing Cognac, with Rye whiskey.
They would also one day have to innovate the cocktail once more when Absinthe was stupidly banned, but that’s another story.
So why is Bourbon so celebrated in the Crescent City and elsewhere if Rye replaced Cognac?
We don’t have a Sazerac with Bourbon, it’s RYE. We do the La Louisiane with Rye. We do our Old Fashioned’s properly I might add, with Rye.
Bourbon cocktails suck in comparison yeah, I said it here’s a box of Kleenex to dry your leaking eyes. Every single Bourbon cocktail can be improved effortlessly simply by using Rye instead.
Do people make Old’s with Bourbon? Absolutely, and I don’t understand it at all. Rye cuts the sweetness of the sugar, just as it cuts the sweetness of the Vermouth in a Manhattan.
There is a reason Rye is better in a cocktail, because it has complexity that offsets the obvious sugar. Americans do have a sweet tooth, so I get it, but STILL.
Rye whiskey belongs in Canadian whisky style glassware, pictured here is the Denver and Liely whisky glass, nothing better.
When folks visit or ask me about a local Rye, I pause a moment and lament the fact that there isn’t a Rye whiskey distilled in Louisiana. Why?
We don’t grow Rye here, because it’s impossible to grow Rye in the hot molten swamp, and smaller distilleries tend to want to source locally so they look to other grains.
Our small distilleries are doing a lot of rice whiskey, because rice does well here. It’s tasty, but it ain’t Rye.
Is there Rye here? Of course, several NDP’s source from MGP, and then there’s the ubiquitous Sazerac (headquartered in Metairie, LA), but we don’t have a true local Rye maker to support.
We are left having to beg borrow and steal from other states for our proper Rye fix.
Thank Little Richard for Riverboat Captains, or we’d have to fight over the pitifully small amount of Rye being distilled at the Sazerac House.
Yes, the Sazerac House has a still and they make enough Rye to fill one barrel per day which is then sent to Kentucky to age, which will ultimately be sent back metaphorically down the river to be sold in the gift shop in the coming years.
Right now, the Saz at the Saz house gift shop, is made in KY but in 2025 we will have local made Rye at long last.
Fun fact about Rye grain, distilleries all over the country often have to import the grain from Europe, we simply don’t grow enough domestically, so some of that delicious Rye that you might in fact be sipping on right now while reading this, still has some literal old world connections. Pretty cool no?
There are a lot of smaller distilleries that are investing deeply in the Rye category, often locally sourcing their grains (oh yeah the Terroir!) for a very local flavor profile.
Some are even resurrecting lost strains to bring back some flavors in Rye that modern drinkers have never tasted before.
The future of Rye in this country is going to be a very bright one, full of opportunities to discover something wonderful, and will likely continue to require the assistance of Riverboat Captains, but hell, that’s part of the fun for Rye fans anyway isn’t it?
Rye demands that you wear a tie when drinking it. Ok, no it doesn’t, but maybe we should show it some respect now and then? Without a silly hashtag please?
Rye has always been dirtier, grittier, and more complex than Bourbon. As people dive deeper into their own personal whiskey journeys, they are discovering the vast variety of Rye whiskey and the various regional styles.
Maryland rye, a bit sweeter than most, no less complex than others. Empire rye, spicy, robust, earthy, Indiana rye, spicy, peppery, dillish. Colorado rye, beeresque, woody, aggressive.
Texas rye, assertive, in your face, unbalanced. Kentucky rye, sweeter still than Maryland, lots of vanilla bean. Canadian Rye, minty, less intense spice.
So many others to list and discover, all so totally different, unlike Bourbon which seems to play in a well defined walled garden.
Yes Bourbon has nuance, but the wide range of flavor profiles doesn’t exist in Bourbon the way it does in Rye.
I encourage folks that are Rye-curious to not go with the so-called “Bourbon drinkers Rye.” Drink a fucking Bourbon if that’s what you love.
So many people think Rye is too spicy for them. Almost as if Rye is a hockey fight compared to the poetry that is Bourbon. To some, Rye is Bob Probert vs. Link Gaetz.
It can be for some folks. There are Rye’s that punch you in the eye so hard you need time in the harmony hut to recuperate.
Not all Rye is like that, so if you’re Rye curious, GO FOR IT.
It’s ok to go for a starter Rye, like Old Forester Rye, or Old Overholt Bottled-In-Bond, or Turkey 101 Rye, but move on quickly, there is more out there to explore.
Each thing you try, and I encourage you to try every damn style you can get your hands on, will enhance your journey and palate (and help you appreciate that Bourbon in different ways than before).
Go for the local thing that’s 3-years-old and taste what makes the grain so special. No it’s not young! It’s grain forward. You’re tasting the grain and it’s different than tasting the corn.
A 3-year-old Rye can be exquisite. Don’t believe me? Then I dare you to try Pinhook’s Rye Humor if you can still find it. Peerless too.
Try a 3-year-old Bourbon and you might be mad because it’s not ready and awful (looking at you Few). Rye has so much flavor that even off the still it’s superior.
You should never walk down Bourbon street, but you should cross over it now and then and cover it with rye paraphernalia on the way to better bars.
Rye has enigmatic layers to it, waiting to be decoded and understood by the consumer. It’s a difficult whiskey to decipher, which is likely why Bourbon is king right now, but as the whiskey drinker becomes more educated and skilled, it is inevitable that they will gravitate towards Rye.
I’m a huge fan of Bourbon, obviously, but Rye has always been my underground punk band that only a few people know and love.
One day I know that it will break big and become the next Green Day, and people will trip over their Elmers to proclaim that they always loved the spirit and were the OG fans.
It would be easy to dismiss them as poseurs, or trend chasers, but I won’t do that. I want success for my favorite spirit, knowing full well that the growth in sales may make it harder to find what I want when I want it.
I want Rye to take over the mindshare of the whiskey drinker, and generate the same love and appreciation for the superior spirit that I have for it.
I want so much success for the Rye category that the hashtag holiday for Rye comes to an end.
In closing, I have tremendous hope that Rye becomes so popular that we will be forced to celebrate “Bourbon Tuesday” or some such nonsense. Then, all will be right with the world.
- Mickey Pinstripe