This has allowed High West’s distillate to match some of the more assertive flavor profiles of older ryes, despite its relatively younger age. High West’s distillate is likewise made more distinct by the fact that it’s pot distilled, rather than using the large, continuous column stills that are the norm in the American whiskey industry.
As with other malted grains, malted rye possesses a different flavor profile than the base grain, being less classically peppery-spicy, and more “doughy” and distinctly malty, at least to my palate. For one, it’s a 100% rye whiskey, although the mash bill features 80% unmalted rye (which is traditional), and 20% malted rye, which is a style that has become more common in recent years. It helps also that the rye whiskey being distilled in house by High West is some pretty unusual stuff in a few ways. And the addition of their own distillate for the last few years has just been the latest step in making their spirit unique. High West was always one of the most easy to admire of those sourcing MGP juice, though, for their determination to make that liquid unique before simply shipping it off to the consumer. These days, it’s a new High West, as the distillery is no longer sourcing rye from Kentucky, having swapped in its own house-distilled rye into the blend, marrying it with MGP’s classic 95% rye recipe that has been seen in so many other sourced, craft rye whiskeys. High West did this for more than a decade, before finally inviting its own spirit into the mix. In the meantime, they sold blends of sourced rye for years, as both the popular and affordable Double Rye! and the splurgier flagship Rendezvous Rye made use of distillate from Indiana (MGP, of course) and and Kentucky (the Barton 1792 Distillery, which is interesting given that they don’t produce their own rye whiskey). They began distilling and aging rye right off the bat, although it was always with the intention of eventually using their own distillate as part of a blend, rather than selling it directly. When High West Distillery was founded in 2006 and began its (very small, at the time) distilling operations in 2007, they were ahead of the game in their intuition that rye whiskey was going to come back in a big way in the American mixology scene. It’s been a treat to watch some of the whiskey industry’s earlier round of micro distilleries slowly “come of age,” as it were, in the last few years.
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