Iowa Distillery Produces Extremely Rare Malted Rye Whiskey

One of the better craft whiskey stories I think is out there domestically these days is Cedar Ridge Winery & Distillery. They’ve rather convincingly been cranking out quality single malt and bourbon releases from their stills in Iowa. A new whiskey that was recently announced is already sold out of in its first release, but more is planned, which is to say if you want to get a hold of their next batch of a new malted rye expression you best get in line while you can.

Malted rye you say? That’s a new one to me as well. According to Cedar Ridge they are apparently one of only a handful of distilleries in the world producing this kind of spirit. Here’s how they explain what it is:

As opposed to other rye whiskeys- which are quite common- Cedar Ridge uses malted rye in its grain bill.  To malt, the rye grains are soaked in water to germinate, then given a blast of hot air.  Malting the rye generates an enzyme that is naturally helpful with the mashing process and adds weight and an extraordinarily complex flavor profile of toast and biscuit to the whiskey.

Sounds pretty fascinating if you ask me. Information I’ve been able to pull up on this one suggests it runs for around $40 a bottle and it is only available it looks like at this point from the distillery directly, and since they don’t ship, you better live in the area or know someone who does.  Due to production capacity restraints, the folks there are saying only 65 cases will distributed each month through April of 2015.