Templeton 6yr old Rye

VA ABC- $34.99

Total Wine - $35.99

Class VI - $39.90

ABV - 45.75%

AGE - 6 Years

From the Templeton website:  Mature with complex rye notes, our flagship rye is aged 6 years in charred new american oak. 

Templeton rye 6 year is proudly made in the u.s.a with thoughtfully sourced & imported grains.

Aroma - Floral, dry spice, butterscotch, vanilla, cherry, and green apple

Taste - Fruit and toasted oak. Mellow and smooth with a vibrant mouth

Body - Bold oak with burnt sugar sweetness

Finish - Long and lingering spice

We see the handiwork of their advertising department.  “Wow!  Charred barrels of NEW American oak.  That means it’s good!”  American whiskey has to be aged in new oak barrels (according to the rules).  Yes, it’s made in the U.S.A. but not at the Templeton distillery (more about that below).  

Templeton Rye (from Templeton, Iowa) is a really solid rye.  Good for both sipping and cocktails, you can’t go wrong with this whiskey.  I’ll often have a tasting between several bottles of one type of whiskey.  Templeton always at the top of my favorites list.  

You have to look at the very, very fine print on the back, and if you squint, you will see a label on the bottle says, “Distilled in Indiana using U.S. and imported grains”.  In the whiskey drinkin’ business that’s an indication that the distillate is an MGP product.  MGP used to be known as, “Midwest Grain Products, Inc.” but now it’s just MGP.  Their headquarters is in Atchison, Kansas, but the distillery is in Lawrenceburg, Indiana.  It’s an industrial distiller that was making only neutral grain spirits (since WWII).  They developed a menu of distillates that companies could buy, age, and bottle under their own label.  This was hugely helpful for small distilleries who were just starting out.  They could distill some of their own, but also backfill any product with barrels from MGP.  This was a source of controversy ten or fifteen years ago.  The distillers had to tell you where the whiskey was distilled and they tried to hide it in the smallest print they could make and the labels would say things like “Product of Indiana”.  The complaint was that we’re getting the same whiskey, they just slapped a different brand label on it.  

But a funny thing happened on the way to the bottle:  The whiskies changed!  It turns out that the distillate is only half the whiskey story.  Where you age it (and for how long) is the other part of the story.  One distillery was in a location that had a few mild winters.  Another distillery had a few hot summers - the environments in which the whiskey aged was different.  So people started to notice that whiskies from the same MGP distillery tasted differently and it was all part of the aging process.  It’s now less of an issue because we’ve become accustomed to the differences.  Templeton is an important cocktail player on my bar.  I recommend it.  Zikomo!

You can learn more about MGP at Wikipedia,  Whiskied Wanderlust.  And here’s a fun story from Punch about the different rye whiskies that come out of MGP.  

Recipe

TEMPLETON SOUR A gorgeous float of red wine (we find the flavor of Malbec does best to balance our signature rye kick) turns this Templeton Rye whiskey sour, an already impressive egg-white cocktail, into a feast for the eyes as well as the palate.

INGREDIENTS

2 oz. Templeton Rye 6 Year 

3⁄4 oz. Simple Syrup

3⁄4 oz. Lemon Juice

1 Egg White

Cubed Ice

1 oz. Malbec Float

EQUIPMENT

Cocktail Shaker 

Hawthorne Strainer 

Fine Strainer

Rocks Glass

METHOD

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker except the Malbec and dry shake. Add ice and shake vigorously. Hawthorne and fine strain into a rocks glass filled with ice and float with the Malbec.