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Straight Empire Rye

Straight Empire Rye

Regular price $69.00

Our Straight Empire Rye is made with 80% Danko rye grown in Ancramdale, New York and 20% English malted barley. It’s double pot distilled and aged in charred oak barrels for a minimum of three years. It is one of the few commercially available rye whiskeys made grain-to-glass in the Northeast, where rye first originated in this country. It is also part of a broader project with like-minded distillers throughout New York State to create a rye whiskey category derived from New York’s whiskey heritage. Empire Rye must be made from at least 75% new york-grown rye, must be distilled in New York, and meet the standards for straight rye whiskey. Empire Rye has been on the market for a while, but only now do we have an always-available signature release that lives up to the rich history of whiskey in the Northeast.  

Tasting Notes

With no corn in this mashbill, this high-rye recipe offers notes of honeycomb, orange zest, and cinnamon on the nose while toffee brittle, dried apricot, and barrel spice overtake the palate, and a lingering finish of maple, anisette, and marzipan.

Pot Distilled

Traditional Techniques

Kings County embraces a variety of whiskey cultures and blends them into creative, distinctive whiskeys. We distill for quality over yield using true pot stills manufacturer in Scotland (Forsyths) and Kentucky (Vendome).

Mashbill

We source directly from farmers in NY and maltsters in the UK because we believe that good choices start from the very beginning. We source our grains locally in NY when we can because we believe distinctive ingredients make better whiskey. Here's a breakdown of what grains goes into making this product.

80% Rye

We source our rye from a local farmer in the Hudson Valley, and the variety or strain is called "Danko" rye - a hearty grain with roots in Poland. Our rye whiskey is perhaps most illustrative of the whiskey you might've found in New York pre-prohibition as rye was widely available and commonly used in whiskey production in the mid-Atlantic region, until it began to decline in the 1870s. Very few commercial ryes are made in the traditional way, and ours represents a rebirth of America's first whiskey style.

20% Malted Barley

Our grain comes from Thomas Fawcett Maltsters in the UK. Specifically, we use Golden Promise malted pale barley. Our high-malt mashbill borrows more from Scotch whiskey than traditional bourbons who typically add a flavoring grain such as rye or wheat.

“If bourbon belongs to Kentucky, then rye whiskey belongs to the Northeast and New York in particular. This is really the culmination of the Empire Rye project, begun a decade ago in Denver at the American Craft Spirits Association’s convention, and it has taken fully ten years to have sufficient inventory to create a mainstream rye release which we believe honors the tradition of rye whiskey in New York and stands out from a crowded field of peers."

Founder and Distiller, Colin Spoelman

use it in your home bar

Sazerac

This cocktail harkens back to 1800s New Orleans - a time of much higher rye consumption; a tradition we'd like to see come back. You can find this cocktail at our tasting room only when rye is available, so grab a bottle when it's available and try this build at home.

- 2 oz Straight Empire Rye
- 1/4 oz simple syrup
- 3 dashes of peychaud's bitters
- 2 dashes of angostura bitters
- stir in a mixing glass and serve up in an absinthe-rinsed rocks glass. garnish with a lemon peel

Find more cocktails

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