Rye Whiskey

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Wayne Curtis, How Rye Came Back; The unexpected source of a craft-whiskey boom. The Atlantic, September 2014.
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... e-came-back/375061/

Note:
(a) "Threatened with extinction after Prohibition, it survived by going feral in Cheever-esque bars, drunk only by those who hadn’t heard that the world had moved on to more-modern libations."

Andrew Delahunty and Sheila Dignen, Oxford Dictionary of Reference and Allusion. 3rd. Oxford University Press (2010), at 80
books.google.com/books?id=hX6rCuCLI2MC&pg=PA80&lpg=PA80&dq=Cheeveresque+dictionary&source=bl&ots=DAeIKLdg8n&sig=F0Eld-049_B2-AzIkfiuQkCMl7o&hl=en&sa=X&ei=HXMXVPfMBsG2yATb44HADQ&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Cheeveresque%20dictionary&f=false
(“Cheever, John [Lit.] (1912-82) A US novelist and short story writer. His works are set in the suburbs of American cities and typically portray a lack of real communication between people, or the emotional emptiness and lack of community of suburban life.  > Mentioned in the context of superficial relationships or suburban life which is superficially pleasant but empty or sinister beneath the surface (adjective Cheeveresque).  The body artist begins with a set piece worth of John Cheever, with a married couple having breakfast, two people living in the same place but not quite together. Sunday Herald 2001") (brackets original)
(b) "What few people know, however, is that an awful lot of the craft whiskey found in these different bottles traces back to a single distillery in Lawrenceburg, Indiana"

Lawrenceburg, Indiana
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrenceburg,_Indiana
(on the Ohio River west of Cincinnati)

(c) "In the 1990s, the Seagram’s heirs went chasing after Hollywood unicorns, buying MCA—the parent of Universal Studios and its theme parks—with spectacularly disastrous results. Seagram’s, which had been in the liquor business since 1857, tanked and sold off its distilleries. The Indiana rye, sitting in barrels stacked in warehouses, was acquired by a major spirits producer, Pernod Ricard."
(i) Seagram
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagram
(1857-2000; Headquarters Montreal, Quebec; founded by Joseph E Seagram; acquired by the Brofmans in 1928; In 1995, Edgar Bronfman, Jr went to Hollywood [and lost his shirt])
(ii) Pernod Ricard
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pernod_Ricard
(a French company; 1975 – Old rivals Pernod and Ricard merged to form Pernod Ricard SA)

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(d) “Some of the whiskey was bottled up by another large producer, Diageo, which branded it as Bulleit rye; other barrels were sold off to independent bottlers, who blended it with other whiskeys or aged it further and then slapped their own labels on it. You’ll find this ur-rye in bottles of Templeton, High West, Redemption, Willett, and Old Scout, among others. These independent bottlers, it turned out, hit a trifecta: they snapped up superb aged rye, they acquired it on the cheap, and they did so just as consumer demand began to explode.”

ur- (prefix, often capitalized; German [the same modern meaning as in English])
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ur-
(e) “Larry Ebersold, the former distiller at Seagram’s, told me that the company had put considerable research into the development of its rye whiskey. Researchers experimented with distilling methods and then adjusted the proportions of grain. One breakthrough came after they received a shipment of rye grain from Sweden. Rather than smelling like ‘a barnyard,’ as did most of the domestic rye they used, Ebersold recalled, ‘this was some of the sweetest-smelling rye grain and made some of the best rye whiskey we had ever produced.’ The company soon changed how it handled its grain to amass rye that resembled the Swedish shipment.”

barnyard (n): “yard adjoining a barn, in which farm animals are kept”
www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/barnyard

(f) “But regardless of where the whiskey comes from, our newfound thirst for rye seems here to stay. Craft distillers are even rolling out long-forgotten variations, including Monongahela and Maryland ryes. ‘It’s not a fad,’ Jay Erisman says. ‘It’s part of a cultural shift in drinking.’”
(i) Monongahela
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monongahela
(may refer to [A] Monongahela, Pennsylvania, a city in Washington County; [B] Monongahela, a rye whiskey from Monongahela, Pennsylvania made prior to prohibition")
(ii) Monongahela, Pennsylvania
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monongahela,_Pennsylvania
(a city located approximately 17 miles (27 km) south of the [Pittsburgh] city proper; population was 4,300 at the 2010 census; near theconfluence of Pigeon Creek and the Monongahela River)

Quote: “The word Monongahela is Native American in origin, meaning “falling banks”. The Monongahela tribe was also indigenous to the area prior to the settlement of the city.

(g) “The days when Old Overholt was the only rye on the shelf, in other words, are now safely behind us.”
(i) Old Overholt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Overholt
("is one of the few straight rye whiskies available at most liquor stores in the US. It is aged for three years and bottled at 80 proof (40% alcohol by volume)"/ was originally distilled in Broad Ford, Pennsylvania [but now produced at the Jim Beam distillery in Clermont, Kentucky]; named for Abraham Overholt, a farmer)

* The term “straight whiskey” is defined by US government.
Code of Federal Regulation: Title 27, Part 5, §5.22 (2)(b)(1)(iii)
www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?rg ... 27:1.0.1.1.3.3.25.2
(“Whiskies conforming to the standards prescribed in paragraphs (b)(1)(i) and (ii) of this section, which have been stored in the type of oak containers prescribed, for a period of 2 years or more shall be further designated as ‘straight’; for example, ‘straight bourbon whisky,’  ‘straight corn whisky,’  and whisky conforming to the standards prescribed in paragraph (b)(1)(i) of this section, except that it was produced from a fermented mash of less than 51 percent of any one type of grain, and stored for a period of 2 years or more in charred new oak containers shall be designated merely as ‘straight whisky.’ No other whiskies may be designated ‘straight.’  ‘Straight whisky’ includes mixtures of straight whiskies of the same type produced in the same State”)
(ii) rye whiskey
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye_whiskey
(section 1.1 Differences between rye and bourbon

Quote: “Rye whiskey was the prevalent whiskey of the northeastern states, especially Pennsylvania and Maryland. Pittsburgh was the epicenter of Rye Whiskey production in the late 1700 and early 1800s. By 1808, Allegheny County farmers were selling one half barrel for each man, woman and child in the country. Rye whiskey largely disappeared after Prohibition. A few brands, such as Old Overholt, survived it, although by the late '60s even old Pennsylvania names such as Old Overholt were being distilled only in Kentucky.