LDI Rye Running Out.

[cowdery]

I just assumed that LDI has been making rye all along and had more in the pipeline for folks like Templeton, High West, Redemption and others. I heard today that they don't. The supply is drying up.

My source suggested High West may have created Bourye to stretch its limited stock of rye. Templeton has been struggling with supply issues for a year, to the point where even the head of the Iowa liquor control authority complained publicly about it. As my source suggested, maybe if they made whiskey instead of just buying it they wouldn't have this problem.

Redemption, of course, is a two-year old and maybe that tells us something. When Templeton and Rendezvous started to take off a couple years ago maybe LDI started to make rye again, so now they have two, maybe three year old whiskey to sell but nothing older.

And as much as LDI's business is struggling, maybe they can't afford to age it any longer than that. I have heard that Templeton has whiskey in barrels in Iowa. Maybe they're buying two-year-old rye from LDI and aging it themselves. Maybe it's not even two years old. Either way, they are a couple of years away from having a more robust supply. That's plenty of time for them to kill the brand.

Obviously I woud prefer it if these producers would just tell us what they're doing, but the detective work is kind of fun too.

[White Dog]

So Chuck, you've said in the recent past that the Rye boom is more hype than reality, but this post seems to say otherwise. Maybe it's really happening, but it does not extend to products like Beam Rye? Could we be living in the age of LDI Rye revival? :lol:

[p_elliott]

So Chuck, you've said in the recent past that the Rye boom is more hype than reality, but this post seems to say otherwise. Maybe it's really happening, but it does not extend to products like Beam Rye? Could we be living in the age of LDI Rye revival? :lol:

I don't ever remember Chuck saying that, rye has been on steady increase for several years.

[wadewood]

Rye sales may be increasing, but in the big scheme of things - total Rye sales are still just a drop in the bucket compared to bourbon.

[barturtle]

Rye sales may be increasing, but in the big scheme of things - total Rye sales are still just a drop in the bucket compared to bourbon.

This may be true, but moving from a single day's production in an entire year, to 2 or 3, and from the $10 shelf to the $30 shelf is a massive increase in profits.

[White Dog]

I don't ever remember Chuck saying that, rye has been on steady increase for several years.

[silverfish]

Cowdery blog June 5, 2010.

[squire]

There is plenty of good rye out there so I see no need to experiment with underage stuff especially at a higher than average price.

[DeanSheen]

There is plenty of good rye out there so I see no need to experiment with underage stuff especially at a higher than average price.

[squire]

Oh yes Robert, I can't speak for other areas but locally I can get rye expressions from Beam, Turkey and Saz, Rittenhouse requires a bit more of a drive. I found that in Florida about 16 years ago and bought a case.

By volume or bottling I cannot say, my point was with good rye available from houses who sell nationally our Forum members should be able to get a good product without paying twice as much for a craft supplier who may not in fact actually made the whisky.

[Josh]

I think I agree with Rob here. I can't speak for other regions, but none of the "everyday" ryes in Michigan are particularly old, or particularly easy to find. There's a real dearth of middle-aged rye around here.

[White Dog]

Oh yes Robert, I can't speak for other areas but locally I can get rye expressions from Beam, Turkey and Saz, Rittenhouse requires a bit more of a drive. I found that in Florida about 16 years ago and bought a case.

By volume or bottling I cannot say, my point was with good rye available from houses who sell nationally our Forum members should be able to get a good product without paying twice as much for a craft supplier who may not in fact actually made the whisky.

[callmeox]

Just to toss my .02 in here...

I recall reading here on SB that rye in the barrel will plateau between 6 and 12 years of age with no appreciable improvement/change taking place. Perhaps that is the reason for a lack of middle aged rye on the market, it isn't really much different than the younger stuff.

While this may not be the exact terminology used in the discussion, that's what I remember from it.

[cowdery]

My point is that if you judged by the amount of press coverage, you would think that rye whiskey is close to giving bourbon a run for its money, when in fact it is not. Yes, rye production today is probably two or three times what it was, say, ten years ago, but it's a big increase from a very small base. And, of course, bourbon production is way up too over the same period. Rittenhouse is a brand that went from complete obscurity to being the darling of the cocktail set, so it is in notoriously short supply, and baby Saz is a new brand, but there doesn't seem to be any shortage of Wild Turkey rye, Jim Beam rye or Old Overholt. And now there appears to be some evidence of a gap in LDI's production.

[White Dog]

Just to toss my .02 in here...

I recall reading here on SB that rye in the barrel will plateau between 6 and 12 years of age with no appreciable improvement/change taking place. Perhaps that is the reason for a lack of middle aged rye on the market, it isn't really much different than the younger stuff.

While this may not be the exact terminology used in the discussion, that's what I remember from it.

If it plateaus, what about all the tremendous Ryes at 18, 21, or 23 years of age? Are people saying Rye can only be young, or really old? A 10yr Rye won't show much until it's aged up towards 20 years? That's hard to believe. Saying Rye won't get better with age sounds like the Fortune Brands PR department.

[callmeox]

If it plateaus, what about all the tremendous Ryes at 18, 21, or 23 years of age? Are people saying Rye can only be young, or really old? A 10yr Rye won't show much until it's aged up towards 20 years? That's hard to believe. Saying Rye won't get better with age sounds like the Fortune Brands PR department.

Who said that rye wouldn't get better with age? That's one heck of a strawman there, Lou.

18, 21 and 23 year old ryes are not between 6 and 12 years of age so they would not be a part of any 6 to 12 year old plateau (if it exists).

Feel free to check my math.

The theory was that there's not much difference in taste between a 6 year old rye and a 12 year old rye, so there's no reason to make a distinct age stated product in that range. It's not different enough.

Or:

The juice doesn't change much between age 6 to 12 years. At 12, it hits rye whiskey puberty and begins to change again.

[barturtle]

Who said that rye wouldn't get better with age? That's one heck of a strawman there, Lou.

18, 21 and 23 year old ryes are not between 6 and 12 years of age so they would not be a part of any 6 to 12 year old plateau (if it exists).

Feel free to check my math.

The theory was that there's not much difference in taste between a 6 year old rye and a 12 year old rye, so there's no reason to make a distinct age stated product in that range. It's not different enough.

Or:

The juice doesn't change much between age 6 to 12 years. At 12, it hits rye whiskey puberty and begins to change again.

I think this is just an old wives (or bourbon focused company) tale. I've had some amazingly good 8, 10 and 12yo ryes, they were nothing like that at 6yo or 15yo, and there has been definite differences between the ages of similar sourced products.

[callmeox]

I think this is just an old wives (or bourbon focused company) tale. I've had some amazingly good 8, 10 and 12yo ryes, they were nothing like that at 6yo or 15yo, and there has been definite differences between the ages of similar sourced products.

Like I said initially, I recall the conversation here on SB about it. I'll search for the thread later.

[squire]

Dog, I wasn't addressing the volume available, rather my post was comparing the price of regular rye to that of the micros.

[cowdery]

What's available in ryes has mostly to do with the size of the market overall. Rye is a very small segment. It is slightly less small than it used to be but it is still very small.

None of those ryes in their teens and twenties were aged that long on purpose. There's no reason to think we'll ever see their kind again.

The big distilleries always have stuff long-aging, some of which never becomes a product.

I think you're giving them way too much credit if you think it has to do with organoleptic analysis of rye whiskey at various ages.

These people who are using LDI's rye are, like LDI, opportunistic. They find out what they can get then decide if they can build a product around it.

[White Dog]

Chuck, out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on middle-aged Rye. Do 8 to 12 year Ryes taste the same as 4-6 year Ryes, as Ox has said? And does Rye need to make it near 20 years in barrel before it takes on aged characteristics?

Or is this just marketing BS, as they see no need to put out products for the connoisseur's category, since it's such a small drop in the bucket?

(On an additional note, I've always felt, in wine and other drink categories, it's the high-end that leads the path for wide-scale trends. It may take awhile for the mass-market to catch up, but it will. 10 years ago the large companies thought Malbec was merely a wine-geeks' darling, but now Diageo and Constellation are trying to catch up to meet demand.)

Maybe they are looking at their older Rye stocks and scratching their chins? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if anyone releases a 10yr Rye on the market that many of us will be breaking down doors to get it.

[cowdery]

It's hard to say because there just aren't enough ryes out there at different ages, because the market is so small. Although most people here can probably name a dozen "different" ryes aged more than 10 years, they are virtually all from a couple of specific distillations -- the famous CoK batch, the Medley batch, the Heaven Hill batch. What else is there? I can say that I have long been very fond of the Van Winkle rye, labeled at 13 years but ranging up to about 18 in actual bottlings. I certainly do not believe "rye needs to make it near 20 years in barrel before it takes on aged characteristics." I find very young ryes particularly unpleasant, more so than any bourbons. So while a bourbon might be acceptable at four years a rye isn't acceptable until six, but I wouldn't stake to much on even that generalization because the sample size is so small. I don't think rye ages very differently from bourbon except that rye needs a little more time at the beginning, as do some bourbons because of their rye content, to smooth out the rough edges. So although I'm not sure Ox said "8 to 12 year ryes taste the same as 4-6 year ryes," I would not agree with that statement.

[callmeox]

Chuck, out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on middle-aged Rye. Do 8 to 12 year Ryes taste the same as 4-6 year Ryes, as Ox has said? And does Rye need to make it near 20 years in barrel before it takes on aged characteristics?

Wow. Since we are just making shiat up here, do you still stand behind your statement that you believe it is natural to beat your spouse and children as long as they are are asking for it? :bigeyes:

Take a moment and re-read the thread. If you really don't understand the concept that I was trying to relay from memory here, I will gladly break it down for you.

[Gillman]

Here's my theory on the age expressions seen in the market to date.

Old rye was available due to being aged for a customer who never asked for it (Heaven Hill's stocks which became Rittenhouse 21 and 23 year old), or from distillers who for some other reason, probably market limitations, didn't find a market for it until the fashion for old whiskeys started in the wake of Van Winkle's success in Japan with old stocks. So when all these started to come out, the whiskeys were at least 18 years old or so.

An exception being VWFRR, which came out initially at 13 years or close to it and then got older until tanked and mingled with Medley rye. That 13 when it was 13, and the similar Old Time rye, were very good and showed I would say a median palate between old rye and young rye. At the same time, I do believe as it happens that 6 year old rye probably in most cases is not that different from 8-10 year old. With a relatively small rye market, it wouldn't make sense to segment these, but after 12 years aging (say 12-18) it would be different. However, I theorise there wasn't enough or any rye in the market at this age except for VW's rye, that is why we never saw any out there.

On the other hand, young rye (generally 4 years old) was always around, so it wasn't a stretch to wait a bit and release a 6 year old rye, as WT did.

But hence the gap as I perceive it, it was basically that some rye was aging long after anyone wanted really to sell it and then it came into its own. The rest was 4-6 years and available. The middle range did not exist in the stocks of the suppliers...

Gary

[Gillman]

And to pick up on a point made in another thread, young rye can be sold, at 3-4 years through normal channels, and even younger in some cases to craft distillers, due to the rye renaissance of recent years. It doesn't have the chance to get to 8-10-12 years age. The only way would be to ramp up production and lay some away intentionally for those periods. If that is happening, we are not seeing the benefits yet. What little well-aged rye the distillers have is I would think being saved for addition to balance the standard expressions.

Gary