Rye whiskey was the “distillate of choice” on the Eastern Seaboard in colonial and post-colonial days, said F. Paul Pacult in Wine Enthusiast. George Washington’s private distillery on his Mount Vernon estate contained five copper pot stills, which produced 11,000 gallons of whiskey in the three years before he died. His recipe called for grain ratios of 60 percent rye, 35 percent corn, and 5 percent barley.
After the Civil War, corn-based bourbon became the fashionable set’s whiskey of choice, and rye began a long slide into obscurity. In recent years, however, new labels have begun to debut, and bartenders are adopting original recipes that call for rye in such cocktails as the Manhattan and the Old Fashioned. These three recommended ryes, based on our 100-point scale, come from a recent sampling of 20 American and Canadian ryes:
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