American rye whiskey, snuffed out by Prohibition, has made a startling comeback with sales jumping 900 percent since 2009, and the hype surrounding the reopening of former President George Washington’s distillery is getting credit for sparking the boom.
“Nobody was drinking rye 10 years ago,” said David Pickerell, the distiller of Whistle Pig and Hillrock whiskeys. “The dot on the rebirth was right here, at Washington’s Mount Vernon,” he added.
Whistle Pig and Hillrock distiller David Pickerell credits the reopening of the Washington distillery 10 years ago sparked the bourbon and rye boom.
At a ceremony to mark the 10 year anniversary of the reopening of Washington’s distillery and gristmill, the original distillers who cooked up the president’s recipe, including Pickerell, and the industry’s titans who are also advisors, uncorked a rare aged version of one of their first barrels to celebrate the success of the venue and the sales explosion.
“Demand is brisk,” said Kraig R. Naasz, president of the industry’s lobbying group, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, which was the initial investor and proponent of recreating Washington’s distillery in 2001.
He revealed that since 2009, production has grown 778 percent, to nearly 775,000 cases a year. Revenue has jumped 900 percent, to nearly $160 million.
The growth has also been fed by the explosion in popularity of cocktails and the drive to use pre-Prohibition ingredients in them, mainly rye. The distillers also said that Americans are looking for less sweet whiskeys and spicy rye fits the bill.
Big distillers like Jim Beam are fueling the market, but it is also being fed by an explosion in the craft distillery market where rye is huge.
Bourbon is also exploding, and between the two, distilleries are running at full capacity, a boom for their local communities especially in agriculture which supplies the grains.
“Nobody saw this coming,” said Angel’s Envy Wes Henderson. The elite distillery recently expanded he said, and it’s already planning another expansion. “Everybody’s all of a sudden crazy about bourbon,” he said.
Locally, Purcellville, Va.’s Catoctin Creek is part of the growth. “It’s real,” said distiller Becky Harris.
All 11 of the distillers who participated at the Mount Vernon anniversary said that the recreation of the Washington distillery and the flood of media it received was the key to the rye, and bourbon, revival in America.
“That’s when people started paying attention,” said Pickerell, one of the two co-distillers of the the original Washington rye. “Now there isn’t enough to go around,” he added.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
