TJ and John Osborne with their WhistlePig PiggyBack Rye
Rye specialists WhistlePig Whiskey have brought back their Legend Series, and this time they're teaming up with a pair of country music stars. The WhistlePig PiggyBack Legends Series: Brothers Osborne Barrel is out today, available online at shop.whistlepigwhiskey.com and at selected retail stores in Tennessee, Texas and Illinois soon. The Grammy Award-winning duo picked their own barrel for the rye, and has signed 100 of the bottles that can be preordered by mega-fans for $225. Rumor has it that they might have slipped a few autographed bottles into the inventory that is available for online ordering as a surprise for some lucky purchasers.
Proceeds from the sales of each bottle will benefit Rogers Behavioral Health and their Mission Possible Fund, raising funds to provide free mental health treatment to low-income patients.
"We’re very proud to release a new kind of single for our family to enjoy this holiday season,” said John and TJ Osborne. “At its core, music is a string of notes that creates a perfect melody, and the same applies to whiskey. You want a combination of various components that complement one another, and whether it's music or whiskey, it's always a dynamic mix. We are huge fans of WhistlePig, so much so we included them in our recent music video. We’re inviting everyone to raise a glass with us to something dangerously good!"
The distillery's Legend Series invites celebrities and stars to the distillery to select a single barrel that is then bottled for a limited release with proceeds going to the charity of their choice.
The first edition of the Legends Series was the Big Papi Barrel, in partnership with National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee David Ortiz. Just to keep it weird, the whiskey was finished in barrels that included Ortiz’s maple baseball bats, making it the world’s first “toasted bat-finished whiskey.”
Rye is a notoriously difficult grain to work with as part of the brewing and distilling process because it doesn’t contain as many enzymes to stimulate fermentation as starchy corn or malted barley and because it can become a real sticky mess when it is cooked. So many smaller distilleries use close to the 51 percent minimum rye content when creating their rye whiskeys.
But the team at WhistlePig Whiskey is not afraid to take on the difficult grain, and their PiggyBack Rye Whiskey is an excellent example of what a 100 percent rye mash bill should taste like. WhistlePig has a reputation as a premium product, sourcing some really old distillate and producing some of their own in their Vermont distillery to age in oak barrels.
For PiggyBack, the late Dave Pickerell — the original whiskey consultant who helped to design the brand — was aiming for a more affordable price point and a rye that would be particularly well-suited for use in cocktails. By combining some purchased whiskey with rye distilled on site, WhistlePig PiggyBack (get it?) is able to come in at around $50 a bottle. While this is certainly more expensive than many other offerings, considering the proof premium of a 96+ proof whiskey, it’s right in line with other premium ryes.
That higher proof also allows for the spicy notes of the grain to come through in cocktails like a Manhattan or an Old Fashioned without competing with the other ingredients. The age statement on the barrel is six years, but that represents the youngest whiskey used, as dictated by labeling laws. There is a very good chance that some of the blend includes barrels that were aged years longer.
The result has quickly become one of my favorite cocktail bases on my home bar — the chance to give back to mental health causes only makes it even more delicious.
