Sagamore blends this rye in lots of twenty barrels — small enough that each batch carries its own signature, big enough to hold the house style steady. It is distilled and aged on Baltimore's waterfront, where the distillery has been running since April 2017, then proofed with water trucked 22 miles from a spring house built in 1909 on Sagamore Farm: limestone-fed, calcium-rich and a constant 52°F.
Two mash bills do the work. The first is high in rye with malted barley, and carries the baking spice and the fruit. The second leans on corn and malted barley for something rounder and sweeter. Both go through three distillations — a 40-foot copper column, then a pair of copper doublers — and age separately in once-used American white oak charred about thirty seconds over open flame. The barns have no climate control, so the whiskey is driven into the wood through a Baltimore summer and drawn back out over the winter. Only at the end are the two blended. Bottled at 93 proof, with current batches running five to six years old.
That proof is the useful part. At 93 it takes a single large cube without going thin, and it builds a firmer Manhattan than bourbon does, because the rye spice reads through the vermouth instead of under it. Try it neat first to find the honey and baked apple the blend is aiming at.
A lot of rye whiskey at this price is either sharp enough that it has to be mixed or so rounded off it may as well be bourbon. This is neither, which makes it the bottle to hand someone who is sure they don't like rye.
Sagamore blends this rye in lots of twenty barrels — small enough that each batch carries its own signature, big enough to hold the house style steady. It is distilled and aged on Baltimore's waterfront, where the distillery has been running since April 2017, then proofed with water trucked 22 miles from a spring house built in 1909 on Sagamore Farm: limestone-fed, calcium-rich and a constant 52°F.
Two mash bills do the work. The first is high in rye with malted barley, and carries the baking spice and the fruit. The second leans on corn and malted barley for something rounder and sweeter. Both go through three distillations — a 40-foot copper column, then a pair of copper doublers — and age separately in once-used American white oak charred about thirty seconds over open flame. The barns have no climate control, so the whiskey is driven into the wood through a Baltimore summer and drawn back out over the winter. Only at the end are the two blended. Bottled at 93 proof, with current batches running five to six years old.
That proof is the useful part. At 93 it takes a single large cube without going thin, and it builds a firmer Manhattan than bourbon does, because the rye spice reads through the vermouth instead of under it. Try it neat first to find the honey and baked apple the blend is aiming at.
A lot of rye whiskey at this price is either sharp enough that it has to be mixed or so rounded off it may as well be bourbon. This is neither, which makes it the bottle to hand someone who is sure they don't like rye.
