South Carolina’s Crouch Distilling Has New Rye Malt Whiskey

As we’ve written about before rye malt whiskey is a very uncommon whiskey style, especially when compared against the usual malt barley making up the majority of single malt bottlings. Another American craft distillery is nonetheless getting on this bandwagon, as South Carolina based Crouch Distilling has just announced the pending release of its first batch of Carolina Rye Single Malt Whiskey.

This new whiskey, according to the distillery, is distilled from 100 percent malted rye, much like the one from Oppidan we previously covered. It will be available directly from Crouch at its tasting room later this month, with each 750 ml bottle pricing at $50. Reservations are being taken for this initial batch, which was aged in new charred oak, and you can find more details over at the Crouch Facebook page.

Crouch, located in the Palmetto State city of Columbia, was established in 2014 by Phil and Jessica Crouch. Phil Crouch apparently was a miller at a local organic grain mill before opening the distillery, and this passion for the grain looks to show in the fact grain milling happens onsite. This is followed up by further hands on work in the mashing and distilling before the whiskey is then aged in their own cooperage and bottled.

Tasting notes for the rye single malt are a little limited at this point, by the way, indicating only it has a “strong rye spice” and notes of vanilla.