7 Things I Learned by Drinking a Lot of WhistlePig Rye
I mean, in addition to that it's expensive
7 Things I Learned By Drinking a Lot of WhistlePig Rye
April 21, 2024
I love WhistlePig ryes, but it’s an expensive habit.
Its flagship product, aged 10 years, retails for about $100. But the company famously makes super-premium products, with many bottles running into the mid-hundreds of dollars and northward (15-year estate aged, $300; Boss Hog V, $1,000 from independent sellers online).
When I’m feeling flush and contemplative I’ll order a 12-year Old World neat at a bar, savoring the lovely complexity the company’s artisans coax from the spicy, notoriously difficult-to-work-with grain, nodding in quiet admiration and muttering “Damn, 25 bucks a shot?”
Many WhistlePig products are precise, rich, smooth, and elevated, carrying flavor details you simply don’t find in other ryes. (As I point out below, this isn’t true of all products.)
I recently visited with company reps and customers at the Lodge at Spruce Peak in Stowe, Vermont, about two hours from WhistlePig’s headquarters. There’s a WhistlePig Pavilion and a Tasting Shack for high-end pours at the tony four-season resort.
Happily, I got to drink a whole bunch of it during my visit, including a breakfast (!) whiskey and waffles tasting, some quality time in the shack, and a barrel-tasting, where I served as an additional palate as a hospitality executive chose a barrel to be used by his Massachusetts restaurant group. I also got to interview WhistlePig’s head blender.
Here’s what I learned.
1. WhistlePig Rye is Still a Teenager
Given its rustic name, retro labels, and squatty bottles, you’d think WhistlePig was a brand with a long history. Not true. If the company were a person, it wouldn’t even be drinking age.
In the early aughts, the classic cocktail renaissance vaulted rye onto the shelves of craft bars — it’s the smart set’s favored spirit for Manhattans, Old-Fashioneds, and many others.
But there were no high-end ryes for people who’d had their eyes opened to the bad-boy older brother of bourbon. Fifteen years ago there was no rye equivalent of the humongously expensive cult favorite Pappy Van Winkle bourbon or even more tolerably priced-up fan favorites like Blanton’s Single Barrel.
In 2007 entrepreneur Raj Bhakta saw the market opportunity, hired Dave Pickerell, master distiller at Maker’s Mark, and WhistlePig was off and running.
Its first release of WhistlePig rye in 2015, included only ryes distilled in Canada. Since then, the company has shifted its mix so more of its product is homemade, mixing stuff made to spec in Canada and Indiana with liquors from its own stills and finishing more of it at the farm.
2. It’s From the Wrong Part of the Country
Whiskey is supposed to come from Kentucky or Tennessee. Okay, small batches can come from artisanal distilleries practically anywhere, but still.
Betting that a significant national brand of booze could be built in Vermont — a state best known as the home of Ben & Jerry’s, maple syrup, and Bernie Sanders — was an act of faith. Or madness. The company was established on a falling-down dairy farm.
Implausibly, the scheme worked….
Read the other five things I learned at Food, Wine & Travel magazine, where this article appeared.
Loved the full article in Food and Wine!! What an awesomely adventurous company whistle pig is! Have to try that Sirens Song sometime!