Have We Been Wrong About Rye Whiskey’s Flavor All Along?

“Let me put you on the spot here for a second,” Allen Katz recently said to me. “Fill in the blank with one word. Rye whiskey is…”

“Um, spicy?” I replied. And I was right — well, sort of.

Despite any esoteric tasting notes one can use to describe a whiskey, years of marketing have prescribed two blanket terms to describe the flavor of American whiskeys. Bourbon is sweet and rye is spicy. But for Katz, co-founder of Brooklyn’s pioneering New York Distilling Company, these terms not only barely scrape the surface when trying to express the complexity of these spirits but they’re somewhat misleading. 

“I think ‘spicy’ has become an all-too-easy shorthand,” he told me. His whiskey made from heirloom rye variety Horton more than proves this and showcases the spirit's full spectrum of flavor notes.

Rye Whiskey & the Cocktail Renaissance

To understand what Horton is and how it came into the picture we need to go back to the late aughts. The modern cocktail renaissance was hitting fever pitch and after almost disappearing, rye whiskey was once again in demand. This not only meant business for legacy brands, like Rittenhouse and Old Overholt, but an opportunity for up-and-coming craft distillers to make their mark on an American whiskey category long-overshadowed by bourbon. 

“The rejuvenation of cocktail culture, for me, is very specifically a part of the larger arc of Americans reclaiming our taste buds,” Katz says. “And that leads to one paramount quest as a distiller, as a blender — and that quest is the pursuit of flavor.”

After considering many ways to make a rye that would stand out from the pack, Katz eventually decided to make a distinctly New York rye from grain to glass. In 2011, he and his partners established the New York Distilling Company and got in touch with farmer Rick Pedersen up in the Finger Lakes. 

“It turned out that he was just as magnificently geeky as we wanted to be,” Katz says. “And through Rick, we started communicating with the Agricultural College at Cornell University, which has a distinct Seed Savers program.”

They identified three varieties of rye with origins in present-day New York State. But the only one of the three grains that passed their tests was Horton rye, a variety grown by the Horton family in the late 17th century when they immigrated from England. Katz got just ten seeds of it and it would take another five years for Pedersen to grow enough Horton to make a batch of whiskey. 

The Waiting Game

While no one was sure how whiskey made from Horton rye would taste, Katz was comforted by the fact that Pedersen thought the variety showed great potential. “In that first season, Rick told me that the sugars in this rye were going to be phenomenal,” Katz says. “And more importantly, that Horton was going to be very different from conventional rye or any other grain they had grown before.”

After Katz got enough rye to start distilling, he laid down barrels of whiskey crafted with a mash bill of 75 percent Horton rye, 13 percent New York corn, and 12 percent malted barley — a recipe Katz landed on to make the whiskey approachable, relatively familiar,  and cocktail-friendly while still showcasing Horton. 

By the time he had sufficient stocks of six, seven, and eight-year-old barrels of Horton rye, Katz got to blending. And in early 2024, the nearly 14-year journey culminated in the launch of New York Distilling Company’s line of Jaywalk Rye whiskeys, which includes a straight rye, bonded rye, and a single barrel expression bottled at cask strength. 

Fruit-Forward Rye and the Heirloom Revolution 

“We take the idea for granted that rye is spicy, but Horton has wonderful fruit characteristics,” Katz says. “There’s also caramelized sugar flavors and sometimes even tropical notes.”

It wasn’t just an achievement in terms of flavor, but the whole endeavor showed that heirloom grains can benefit agricultural diversity. The New York Distilling Company's ten seeds of Horton rye have evolved into 250 acres of the grain in the Seneca Falls area today.

Even while Katz was waiting on his grains to grow and his whiskeys to age, other distillers were embarking on their own similar heirloom grain journeys across the country. In 2013, High Wire Distilling in South Carolina began growing a local variety of heirloom corn that would eventually be featured in its now-famous Jimmy Red Bourbon. Colorado’s Leopold Bros laid down its first barrels of whiskey made from heirloom Abruzzi rye in 2016. Three years later, Kentucky’s New Riff Distilling unveiled its prized whiskey made from Balboa rye, marking the first commercial use of the grain in decades.

“I think we’re all trying to create something that’s purposefully different that has a really interesting accessibility standpoint,” Katz says. “It’s not just about trying to stand out, nor is it just about marketing the importance of heirloom grains, but showcasing the distinctive differences between grains from the standpoint of flavor.”