WILD BUCK AMERICAN RYE WHISKEY 100-PROOF

Whisky, or whiskey (both spellings are correct), is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. Various grains (which may be malted) are used for different varieties, including barley, corn, rye, and wheat. Whisky is typically aged in wooden casks, often old sherry casks, or may also be made of charred white oak. (credit: Wikipedia)

At NJoy Spirits Distillery, we chose rye to distill our whiskey. Our rye is 100% grown in Florida, 30% on our ranch, and 70% from other Florida farms.

Whiskey-making is ancient! Distillation was practiced by the Babylonians in Mesopotamia in the 2nd millennium BC, beginning with the distillation of perfumes and aromatics. However, this is subject to uncertain and disputed interpretations of the evidence.

The earliest chemical distillations were by Greeks in Alexandria in the 1st century AD, but these were not distillations of alcohol. The medieval Arabs adopted the distillation technique of the Alexandrian Greeks, and written records in Arabic began in the 9th century, but again, these were not distillations of alcohol. Distilling technology passed from the medieval Arabs to the medieval Latins, with the earliest records in Latin in the early 12th century.

The earliest records of alcohol distillation are in Italy in the 13th century, where alcohol was distilled from wine. Ramon Llull (1232–1315) described the technique early. Its use spread through medieval monasteries, mainly for medicinal purposes, such as the treatment of colic and smallpox. (Some think a shot of fine whiskey can help cure a common cold!)

The art of distillation spread to Ireland and Scotland no later than the 15th century, as did the common European practice of distilling “aqua vitae,” spirit alcohol, primarily for medicinal purposes. Medicinal distillation eventually passed from a monastic setting to the secular via professional medical practitioners of the time, The Guild of Barber-Surgeons. 

The earliest mention of whisky in Ireland comes from the seventeenth-century Annals of Clonmacnoise, which attributes the death of a chieftain in 1405 to “taking a surfeit of aqua vitae” at Christmas. In Scotland, the first evidence of whisky production comes from an entry in the Exchequer Rolls for 1494, where malt is sent “To Friar John Cor, by order of the king, to make aqua vitae,” enough to make about 500 bottles.

In 1823, the UK passed the Excise Act, legalizing distillation (for a fee), and this put a practical end to the large-scale production of Scottish moonshine.

By the 1880s, the French brandy industry was devastated by the phylloxera pest that ruined much of the grape crop; as a result, whisky became the primary liquor in many markets.

During the Prohibition era in the United States, lasting from 1920 to 1933, all alcohol sales were banned. The federal government made an exemption for whisky prescribed by a doctor and sold through licensed pharmacies. The Walgreens pharmacy chain grew from 20 retail stores to almost 400. (Whiskey Sales drove the growth of our Walgreens!)

DISTILLATION

Modern stills are made of stainless steel with copper innards (piping, for example, will be lined with copper along with copper plate inlays along still walls). The most straightforward standard distillation apparatus is commonly known as a pot still, consisting of a single heated chamber and a vessel to collect purified alcohol.

American whiskeys. Column stills behave like single-pot stills formed in a long vertical tube. A single pot still charged with wine might yield a vapor enriched to 40–60% alcohol, while a column can still achieve a vapor alcohol content of 95.6%, an azeotropic mixture of alcohol and water.

AGING

Whiskies do not mature in the bottle, only in the cask, so the “age” of a whisky is only between distillation and bottling. This reflects how much the cask has interacted with the whisky, changing its chemical makeup and taste. Whiskies bottled for many years may have a rarity value but are not “older” and not necessarily “better” than a more recent whisky that matured in wood for a similar time. After a decade or two, additional aging in a barrel does not necessarily improve a whisky.

While aging in wooden casks, especially American oak and French oak casks, whisky undergoes six processes that contribute to its final flavor: extraction, evaporation, oxidation, concentration, filtration, and coloration. Extraction, in particular, results in whisky acquiring several compounds, including aldehydes and vanillin, vanillic acid, and syringaldehyde. Distillers sometimes age their whiskey in barrels previously used to age other spirits, such as rum or sherry, to impart particular flavors. NJoy Spirits Distillery typically ages our Wild Buck Whiskey 3 to 3 1/2 years before bottling.

PACKAGING

Most whiskies are sold at or near an alcoholic strength of 40% abv, which is the statutory minimum in some countries—although the strength can vary, and cask-strength whisky may have as much as twice that alcohol percentage. Our WILD BUCK WHISKEY is 100-proof (50% ABV), making it a rare whiskey worldwide.