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Lock Stock & Barrel 16 Year Straight Rye Whiskey a Bittersweet Debut

Lock Stock & Barrel 16 Year Straight Rye WhiskeyIt should have been a whiskey launch to celebrate. It isn’t every day you see a 16-year-old rye whiskey pop up in the market. But for the folks behind Lock Stock & Barrel 16 Year Straight Rye Whiskey, this is a bittersweet occasion, as their leader and founder Robert Cooper recently passed away unexpectedly at the age of 39.

Cooper, better known for being the creative force behind the popular elderflower liqueur St-Germain, also had Hochstadter’s Vatted Straight Rye Whiskey and Lock Stock & Barrel in his company stable. This latter bottling originally debuted as a sourced 13-year-old rye whiskey that had been bottled at 101.3 proof, and was considered by some as a game changer for the category. While game changer is perhaps a stretch, it was still a great whiskey in its own right, which is why seeing a 16 year old expression emerge now is perhaps a fitting whiskey tribute to Cooper’s legacy.

As for this specific bottling, the Lock Stock & Barrel 16 Year Straight Rye Whiskey is a limited release of just 3,000 cases of 107 proof whiskey. It is Canadian in origin, having been double distilled in copper pot stills before being aged “in cold weather for 16 years in newly charred American oak barrels.”

It, like the 13 year old, is presented in a black glass bottle with a gold embossed label that supposed to pay “homage to the bygone era of illicit saloons and bootleggers of frontier America.” It should be available this month for around $150 a bottle.

“We tasted many barrels in our extensive collection of aged, straight rye whiskey and culled the finest that have matured to 16 years old,” said Cooper in a statement before his death. “Lock Stock & Barrel 16 is that rare but true combination of the finest whiskey and the best techniques. Winning the highest honors at the 2016 San Francisco World Spirits Competition further validates the integrity of what we put into every bottle.”

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