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Whiskey Review: Red Saw Rye

We review Red Saw Rye, a high-rye whiskey from Honeoye Falls Distillery in central New York.

OVERALL RATING

7
$60.00
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Tasting Notes

About:

The Red Saw Rye is made from a mash of 85% rye and 15% malted barley, both of which are locally sourced. The bottle for this review, coming from batch number 4, was aged for 6 months and comes in at 96 proof. A 750 ml bottle will cost you somewhere around $60.
Appearance:
The Red Saw Rye is a honey-amber in the glass, with legs that look to fall right in the middle of the spectrum: mid-width, and neither fast nor slow.
Nose:
You can tell that this one’s made with a higher rye mash. A sharp, sweet nose. Almost floral. Cinnamon and mulled wine, rose and honeysuckle.
Palate:
It’s interesting – there’s certainly a great deal of sweetness here, but it doesn’t open up until later. The palate starts sharp – ever have those cinnamon fireball sucking candies? Imagine the first quick bite of one of those – before quickly fading away to the back of the tongue. There’s a bit of a pause, and then the aforementioned sweetness rises up from the back, heavy with caramel and melon. It fades leaving a faint bitter, cloying weight on the back of the tongue.
Finish:
Comments:
Not bad. Not great, but not bad. There’s a shallowness of flavor in the mouth that I’m finding a little disappointing here, as if the true flavor of the rye doesn’t show itself until after you’ve swallowed… but by that point, you need to contend with an unpleasant early-morning cottonmouth taste that underlies the whiskey’s more interesting flavor profile. I ended up taking a note from their website, and tried adding it to a cocktail of my own (a whiskeyrita, if you’re wondering), and enjoyed it a lot more! rnrnUnfortunately, there’s a wide range of great mixer whiskeys that don’t cost upwards of $60. I won’t say don’t buy it… but you could probably get more bang for your buck elsewhere. rn

Editor’s Note: This whiskey was either bought as a sample by The Whiskey Wash or provided to us as a review sample by the party behind it. Per our editorial policies, this in no way influenced the outcome of this review.

Zack Braunstein

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