Allen Katz opened New York Distilling Company in Brooklyn with co-founders Tom and Bill Potter in 2013, forging the modern face of New York City’s distilling scene. Initially launching with two American-style gins, Katz would go on to create award-winning rye whiskey with a historic connection.
“We were fortunate when we started the business and developed some key relationships with local farmers, specifically with Rick Pedersen. Rick and his family are organic vegetable growers in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. We needed someone to grow grain for us. It was paramount for us to be distillers and to distill our products. There is some joy in not just making the whiskey but also the process of discovering grains and growing grains, mashing, fermenting, blending, and aging whiskey. And for the latter, you can’t focus on blending and creating your distinctive profiles until you have inventory to work with and, as they say, ‘liquid’ to lips and say, what do we have here? What is the direction we can go in?” explains Katz.
Katz shares his excitement at finding what he believes is the perfect farming partner: “Pedersen and his family are truly professional, experienced generational farmers who have worked with grains, so we ask their opinion on what they think would be interesting.”
One question Katz asked was if there was a rye with links to New York, that had connections agriculturally or by heritage, and if so, could he sink into it and be a part of this rediscovery. Katz shares that Pedersen connected him to another important source of information, “So Pedersen guided us to colleagues of his at the College of Agriculture at Cornell University. Under their advice and research, the folks at Cornell discovered a few varieties of rye that laid claim to at least a part of their story being in geographic New York state. The rediscovery of the Horton rye grain, with origins that date back to the 1700s, was a part of this process; it was really through that collaboration we were able to procure, through a seed bank, 10 seeds of Horton rye and start to learn about its story.”
On understanding the flavor profile of this rye, Katz explains, “You have to evaluate the seed itself for its viability. That was the first phase of the process, which took several years to propagate enough seeds to start a field test and then garner enough seeds to do an outdoor field test on acreage and see if it would perform. It is a winter rye, so you are planting it after the first fall frost, germinating under a snowpack throughout the winter. And then you cross your fingers and hope that when spring comes, you see the desired result and you can harvest in early to mid-July. That whole process took us about five years, and then we had enough grain to begin mashing and distilling. So essentially, it’s a two-part process, getting the grain up to viability in a reasonable volume and then beginning to distill.”
Katz says, “Discovering the flavors of the Horton rye was both immediate and a long discovery process. Fortunately, we had previously worked with Farmer Pedersen and his family on our unique hybrid of a field race rye, which we lovingly call Pedersen Field Race rye. That was the base of our first rye brand, Ragtime Rye, since its inception. So, we had something to base flavor profiles on and then had our collective experiences working with rye whiskey flavors. As soon as we had enough grain to ferment and distill the Horton rye, it was pretty immediate that by the aroma of the new make, we had something unique to anything we had worked with or tasted prior. The fruit concentration on the nose and the palate was substantially different. You never know what it will turn into as it matures, but we sensed this might be special.”
The grain’s size is unique as well, so the sugars in the grain are highly concentrated into a very small head. A reasonable assumption is that those sugars are going to react differently in both fermentation and distillation, and they did. Katz and his team were able to compare this new make with what they had done in the past to get a sense of how different the profile might be from the rye we are familiar with.
“For our Ragtime Rye, we were blending four-, five-, and six-year-old barrels. We began tasting the Horton barrels earnestly around two years old. As the whiskey began to mature, we started to think about what the final results may be, what the branding may be, and when we might decide the whiskey was ready to bottle. And then Covid hit. Like many businesses, we created a short-term plan for the business to survive Covid-19, and of course, it went on longer than any of us expected. We were grateful that our business made it through, and when we went back to tasting the Horton barrels in earnest, we realized we had something of real regard that was six and seven years old now. So, by purpose or fortune, we had something really spectacular in those barrels. I was glad we had to wait for this whiskey.”
Shortly after Katz and Pedersen began the process of resurrecting the Horton rye grain, there was a designation created in 2015 by six New York distillers who came together to pay homage to the state’s rye history and establish a distinctive whiskey style. Then came the Empire Rye Whiskey Association, which created a set of standards that a producer must meet to label their whiskey ‘Empire Rye’. Those standards are similar to the standards of bourbon whiskey in that you must meet specific criteria to use the statement on a bottle of bourbon. To claim a whiskey is an Empire Rye, the standards say how much of the rye grain used in the whiskey must be grown in New York state. The mash bill must be 75 per cent New York state-grown raw or malted rye, the distillation proof no more than 160 proof, aged for a minimum of two years in charred new oak barrels, and barrel entry proof of no more than 115 proof. The whiskey must be mashed, fermented, distilled, and aged at a single distillery in New York state. A blended whiskey containing no less than 100 per cent qualifying Empire Rye whiskeys from multiple distilleries may be called Blended Empire Rye. “We adore the story of the rye; we love that collectively, we resurrected an heirloom grain, but we are 100 per cent about the flavor,” said Katz.
For a distillery that only makes rye whiskey, Katz believes there is a lot of work to do on educating the consumer on the diversity in the profiles of rye whiskey. “Not all rye whiskey is spicy; not all rye whiskey is dry. The Horton is a great example; it has a different caramelized sugar context that gives off an aroma of ripe peach or apricot. There is some floral honey on the nose that bucks the spicy assumption. On the palate, we get tropical fruit flavors,” Katz says. When asked whether these flavors may primarily result from a different yeast strain or from the Horton grain, Katz explains that for the Jaywalk Rye whiskey, they use the same yeast as their Ragtime Rye whiskey, so he believes it’s the unique concentration of sugars in the Horton rye grain that results in such unique flavors.
“We like to daydream about what whiskey may have tasted like historically; we also like to look at how to incorporate traditional aspects of cinnamon and white pepper that might be found in rye whiskey into the Horton rye,” says Katz. Continuing to emphasize his commitment to flavor first and being less concerned about age statements, Katz notes, “The oldest barrels we have right now of Horton rye are about eight years old. So we might continue to age that whiskey, but ultimately, it comes down to flavor and finding that sweet spot. We are exploring how seasons have affected the maturation process and changed the flavor profile, so that analysis is ongoing.”
The future looks bright for Jaywalk Rye.
