Templeton Rye is a fairly new rye whiskey that is, so far, only available in the Midwest. It is made by a company in Iowa which buys the whiskey from Lawrenceburg Distillers, a large distiller (formerly Seagram's) in Indiana.Templeton Rye is apparently named for a prohibition-era whiskey which was distributed by Al Capone. On its website and bottle, Templeton has adopted a prohibition era aesthetic. Ah, the world of American whiskey, where even a brand new brand can claim a storied history.
Tasting
Templeton Rye, 40% alcohol ($35).
The nose is beautiful; full of rye spice with pickling herbs, very characteristic of a strong rye and very nice. The flavor is doesn't fully follow through with the nose. There is some good spice, but also a bit of soap and a watery quality which dulls the spice. I'd like to try this at a higher alcohol level, which might allow it to retain a bit of the punch from the nose. For now, I'll just enjoy the aromas.
Templeton Rye is not available in California yet, but can be purchased on-line from Binny's, though it is occasionally out of stock.
Hello friend -
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for taking the time to review our product. We really appreciate it.
Wanted to reach out on a couple of points.
1. We have LDI contract distill our product and we also have a distillery in Templeton where we have been distilling product since 2005.
2. Our product has actually been around since the 1920's. It was produced illicitly by many families including those of our two founders, Scott and Keith. The history of Templeton Rye is very genuine. We have made a serious effort to collect the stories of those with first hand knowledge of the prohibition era version of our product. We have over 100 of these videos now available on the Templeton Rye channel on Youtube.
~Your friends at Templeton Rye
Templeton, thanks for your comments. It's great that you are distilling your own spirit. Does any of that spirit go into your current releases of Templeton Rye? If not, when do you expect you will release a whiskey made from your own spirit?
ReplyDeleteThat is a great question. We are sampling all of our aging stock periodically and are pleased with it.
ReplyDeleteOur stance is that we are not going to mess with our current product as we feel it is tremendous.
If product distilled in Templeton tastes similar we will use it. If not we will likely age it another 4-5 years and release it as a very unique limited release in the future while we tweak things.