WhistlePig Farm 10 Year Vermont Rye is one of the most spectacular lies ever to grace the world of whiskey.
Some of you found this article searching for the truth to the WhistlePig lie, some of you came here looking for a review and others because you were on the site and liked the named “WhistlePig”. Regardless of your reason, this blog will sate you.
Pour yourself a glass of something with a little bite to it, and let’s begin.
The Spectacular
WhistlePig is a rye whiskey.
If you want to know the difference between Rye, Bourbon and any other type of Whiskey you learn all about them with this article.
If you’ve never had a true rye (and as the Know your Whiskey article mentioned, it needs to be made from a mash of 51% rye or more to be considered true rye) the easiest way to understand the taste is by thinking of bread.
Beautiful bottle.
First think of corn bread. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.
Now think of rye bread; heavy, dark, full-bodied rye bread.
Now you know what bourbon tastes like, and it’s made from corn. So a whiskey made from rye is going to be much like the bread it makes. Rye is a dense, spicy and full bodied whiskey. In fact it’s much more akin to scotch than bourbon, and because of this rye is typically not on many peoples list of favorite sipping whiskeys.
WhistlePig changes all of that. It is a tremendous spirit and has been ranked by some fancy whiskey ranking people as being the bee’s knees. It really is terrific, and it’s not only “true” rye, it’s made from a 100% rye mash.
If you read that other article you might be wondering
“But you said only some Canadian company made Rye from 100% rye mash? How could this be?”
The Lie
WhistlePig comes in a beautiful bottle (as you can see), it’s clearly labeled as having been hand bottled at Whistlepig farm in Shorham Vermont. It’s 100 proof and the proud product of some dude I’ve never heard of. He hired Dave Pickerell, the ex-Master Distiller from Maker’s mark to be his Master Distiller.
Not quite as sexy.
All of this sounds amazing, but here’s the catch: WhistlePig doesn’t distill a goddamn thing.
WhistlePig buys their whiskey from Alberta Premium distillery. This is that Canadian whiskey company, the only whiskey company, making 100% rye mash whiskey. WhiskeyPig buys it and rebottles it on their farm.
That’s right; WhistlePig Vermont Rye is Canadian Whiskey. Ohh, and it’s as much as $70 a bottle in the states.
WhistlePig Rye is, in fact, a terrific product: it’s just not their product. I highly suggest you buy a bottle of Alberta Premium 30 year or Alberta Springs 10 year (Alberta Springs is the same company/distillery as Alberta Premium), but since that seems to be terribly hard to find you might have to bite the bullet and grab some WP 100/100.
P.S. After knowing this lie, the team page from the “Heritage” part of the WhistlePig website becomes pretty hilarious:
Dave Pickerell, Master Distiller
Dave, a luminary in the world of whiskey, is one of the nation’s preeminent master distillers. Before joining WhistlePig, he spent 14 years as the Master Distiller for Maker’s Mark in Loretto, Kentucky. He joined the WhistlePig team in order to create what he regards as his magnum opus: WhistlePig Straight Rye Whiskey.
I have to go create my magnum opus now by photo copying Dune. I just need to think up a flashy new name.
WhistlePig lies. Photo taken at “Party Mart” in Louisville, KY. (Credit elbowguru)
About Sean Lind
My time is divided between writing, women, pinball and playing my guitar. I give lots of advice, and like to think most of it has turned out well. Get at me with any questions or comments, I love to hear back from friends and enemies alike.
How can this be high class when I recall being 13 and having people boot a 26 of AP for me at around 20 dollars? It was the most obvious teeny-bopper choice since it came with a sticker. Please elaborate.
Xxx
Alberta Premium has no age statement and is packaged in a delightfully tacky bottle. It’s bottom-shelf for pricing but rather high quality in terms of the actual whisky. Alberta Distillers doesn’t make much sense. Hell, their 25yo bottling a few years ago was actually sold for $25.
No! Cancel that! The drunken haze of my youth is returning.. I was thinking of Royal Reserve. Pardon my prior comment.
Xxx
Unfortunatly for those of us outside the reach of the BC liquor stores, AP is only sold in Canada.. So, WP is currently the only option to try this elixire. So, while I’m not crazy about their apperant subterfuge, I’ll probably try their product…
Sean wrote the truth in the article saying Whistlepig is Canadian, and many have stated it’s from Alberta Distillers. The Alberta Premium 30 is a great product, a bargain at $50 when it came out. But…Whistlepig 10yo is not the same as Alberta Springs 10yo…not even close.
SO… I got a bottle of this put into my hands at the bar i work at in metro Detroit.
I was immediately skeptical because a bottle this fancy is usually hiding something and it screamed “look at me” with its commanding width. I took a sample taste and was so bored by it that i nearly fell asleep. Worse yet.. it seemed a little solventy on the nose (due to the high proof…?) not what you would expect from a 10 y.o. I then noted it was distilled in Canada and wondered how much neutral grain spirit they blended into it before selling it to this bottling company to make it taste ‘smooth’…. and in trying to pick it up by the top to point this out to the other manager the gaudy, over sized, loose cork flung right out the top sending the bottle crashing to the floor… all 70 damn dollars of it… good news is it did WONDERS cleaning the grime off the office floor!
My overall assessment- overpriced floor cleaner in a weird shaped bottle designed to get attention by taking up more shelf space. And the cork really did not fit very well.
Kudos, by the way, on the dune reference. you’ve just earned a fan. If your in my neck of the woods sometime you ought to let me buy you a drink…. check this out.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=4750587926542&set=vb.118645791491973&type=3&theater
( its sasafras, vanilla, burdock, andtobacco[tiny bit] and brown sugar infused rye that goes into the glass, by the way, with a big ice rock)
I talked to some of the whistlepig guys at whiskeyfest last year in new york. they’re pretty open about buying their oldest stuff from canada. one big difference we talked about a lot was that their product is all real whiskey and no neutral grain spirits, while most typical canadian whiskeys (including alberta premium etc.) are 90% or more neutral grain spirits. kinda like single malt scotch vs. blended scotch, by analogy, so there’s definitely that. I liked their 10-year and the limited edition 11-year they were demoing, and I bought a bottle of the 10-year a week later which I finished pretty quickly!