What is Maryland Rye?

Let me just start by saying that the definition we’ve assigned to Maryland rye whiskey…is flawed.

I know, it’s not great to start off a post with such a contrarian statement, but hang with me here! I didn’t say it was wrong. I just said it was…flawed.

Google’s AI gives us the following definition for Maryland rye whiskey:

Sounds like the usual spiel, right? Maryland rye = rye with corn in it. BUT- and this is a BIG BUT- that definition only works if you’re talking about Maryland straight rye whiskeys made after 1958! What about the two centuries of whiskey making that came before that?!

So, how does one summarize over two hundred years of whiskey making for a state that has only recently begun to make whiskey again? The definition we’ve come to take for granted for Maryland rye as being “rye with corn in it”  places Maryland rye as “the little sister” of bourbon, doesn’t it? Mostly rye, but trying its best to be bourbon. The “high-rye” version of bourbon that rye whiskey always wanted to be! Right? Only, that was NEVER the case- historically speaking. The current definition for Maryland rye may be convenient for the bourbon industry, but it does a disservice to the history of rye whiskey in the United States.

If you want to know what straight/pure rye Maryland whiskey was before Prohibition, maybe it’s best that we listen to the pre-Pro MD rye whiskey distillers themselves. The article below was written by the great Frank L. Wight, himself. It was written in August 1933, just before Repeal. He wanted to remind everyone what they’d likely forgotten- what Maryland Rye whiskey WAS and what consumers should demand from their rye whiskey now that Prohibition was coming to an end…especially after being without it for 13 years! Wight gets specific, and it’s an excellent read. The only “grain of salt” that we should take with this information is that the rye/rye malt mashbill was his family’s mashbill and not applicable to ALL Maryland ryes. Even though Wight makes that point clear in the article, I feel the need to stress this fact.

Who’s Frank L. Wight, you ask? He was one of the last of the pre-Prohibition Maryland rye distillers. The late James H. Bready, a respected MD rye whiskey authority/historian, added a summary of Frank Wight’s contributions to MD rye in his article for Maryland Historical Magazine-

“Frank L. Wight (1886-1958), a major figure in Maryland’s post-Repeal distilling, was at work in the family’s Cockeysville distillery by 1914. In a 1943 newspaper interview, he recalled the 1911 “make”—from unusually good New York state rye grain. Wight headed the post-Repeal Frank L. Wight Distilling Co., which built a distillery at Loreley, just east of Baltimore, and marketed Sherbrook and Wight’s Old Reserve Maryland straight ryes. Following its purchase and shutdown by Hiram Walker, Inc., of Canada, Wight organized the Cockeysville Distilling Co., built a distillery close to the original Sherwood site, and marketed a Maryland straight rye called Ryebrook. Following his death, the principal backer, Heublein, Inc., of Connecticut, shut down the distillery.”

(James Bready, “Maryland Rye: A Whiskey the Nation Long Fancied—But Now Has Let Vanish.” Winter Issue, 1990.)

Here are two ads for Frank Wight’s Ryebrook Maryland Rye Whiskey. The first was printed in 1953, and the second in 1954.

       
Frank L. Wight gave a simple explanation for Maryland rye in 1933.

“The old rye whiskey may be described briefly as a distillate of the ‘beer’ of rye and rye malt, fractionated in a three-chambered charge still, a ‘low-wine’ doubler and a redoubling or refining still, and finally cured or aged in charred white oak barrels or kegs in heated storage.

Wight goes on to give an in-depth analysis on how Maryland rye whiskey was made and what one should expect from it. His descriptions get quite detailed from a production standpoint, so if you want to geek out, I encourage you to read the whole article. He concludes his article by explaining that Maryland rye whiskey making was an artform:

“I have said that the making of whiskey was an art. Give three cooks the same ingredients and one will produce a fine cake, another a mediocre cake and the third a cake not fit to eat. So it was with the distilling of whisky. Four factors controlled the characteristics and flavor of old Maryland rye. The relative proportions of rye and rye malt, the temperatures maintained in the yeast and large mashes, the points of separation between high wines and low wines, and the nature of the spring water. But in the handling of those four factors there was enough latitude to include whiskies unfit to drink as well as the finest that Maryland could produce. It was in the controlling of these four factors that whisky making became an art.”

Mr. Wight wasn’t alone in his thinking. Another Maryland rye maker to survive Prohibition was Baltimore Pure Rye Distilling Company’s  master distiller, William E. Kricker.

These comments speak to his use of older rye varietals, or what we would call “heritage rye grains” today. Larger-berried, modern hybrid ryes have high carb sugar and lower protein content, so they are unable to produce a dense, heavier product like those being made before Prohibition (or in the case of Baltimore Pure Rye Distillery’s case, AFTER Prohibition). It’s also interesting to note that in the ad for B.P.R. below, the mashbill is front and center, but not explained in any way. BPR was made with 80% rye grain, 18% rye malt and 2% barley malt, or as they described it in their advertising “made with 98% rye”.

To be clear, the ad above was printed in September 1939. The Baltimore Pure Rye Distillery did not release their first bottled-in-bond rye whiskey until July 1938. The company was adamant about not putting their name on a product until it was ready. Before that, the company stayed in business through contract distilling for other companies and by selling blended products. (Sound familiar?) Before William Kricker could release his 4 year old release of B.P.R. as a bottled-in-bond straight rye, one of his distillery’s most popular blends used 49% of their 3-year-old whiskey and blended it with 51% of a 6-year-old Canadian whiskey which they purchased in bulk. The following article goes into great detail about William Kricker’s production methods: 

The reputation of Maryland rye went limping into the second half of the 20th century, coasting on its fine reputation and a century’s worth of excellent reviews. It wouldn’t take long to completely unravel that fine reputation and leave Maryland rye whiskey largely forgotten. If anything, the nosedive that Maryland rye whiskey’s reputation took is a cautionary tale for the whiskey industry- Its fate was the result of some of the staunchest whiskey loyalists in the country feeling that MD rye producers hadn’t held up their end of the consumer bargain. Maryland’s distilleries stopped making good rye, and when consumer demand dropped off, they stopped making rye altogether. The slow death of Maryland rye began after Repeal (1933), but fell off precipitously after the deaths of Maryland’s last two remaining pre-Prohibition master distillers in the late 1950s.

Okay, so how did we come to believe that Maryland rye whiskey had corn in it when history tells us it did not?

There were few Maryland rye whiskey producers from before Prohibition that used corn at all. Their use of corn was much like in Pennsylvania- It was done, but it was generally frowned upon. Even after Prohibition, independently owned Maryland rye producers made it very clear that they only used some combination of rye, barley malt, and rye malt. Maryland rye drinkers were fiercely loyal to their traditions and would never have touched bourbon. But the market shifted in the 40s and 50s as the neutral grain spirit blends came into fashion. The last of the old guard of Maryland rye whiskey makers, Frank L. Wight, died in 1958. His passing coincided with a transition from rye heavy mashbills to a less rigid formula. The 51% rye mashbill, which had only ever been a Kentucky rye mashbill, suddenly tempted Maryland’s biggest rye whiskey producer with its cost saving corn-heavy recipe. With grain prices high, they were more than willing to make the switch. Majestic Distilling Company’s choice to use more corn altered the Maryland rye whiskey category forever. While brands like Pikesville and K&L may be what we remember as the most recent iterations of “old school” Maryland ryes, Majestic’s mashbill was not representative of the history of the category. One company should not represent the entire history of a state’s whiskey producers, folks!

Majestic Distilling Co. (not to be confused with Majestic Distillery, aka Terra Haute, out of Peoria before Prohibition) was formed by Zellic Cohen in 1949. Cohen modernized a vinegar plant in Lansdowne, Maryland (Baltimore County) and began making pure rye whiskey from 98% rye, much like his competitors were doing. After about 4 years, Cohen shifted his focus to bourbon and began marketing all sorts of brands to southern markets. Ever the businessman, he was seeking out a different customer that preferred a lighter spirit to the heavier-bodied pure ryes of yesteryear. Majestic transitioned its production efforts to making bourbons and white spirits like gin and vodka. Their biggest buyer of the rye products they still produced was Standard Distillers, owned by Andrew Merle. Standard purchased the majority of Majestic’s rye stocks and rebottled that rye under their own brand labels. (Standard did not distill its own whiskeys- It was a bottler and distributed their rye whiskeys out of their warehouse near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.) Standard’s major brand was Pikesville, which Andrew Merle owned since 1936. Majestic Distilling Company bottled a very small amount of their own rye as “Baltimore County.” These companies- Majestic and Standard- one a producer and the other a bottler- kept the Maryland rye game alive into the 1980s. It is not clear exactly when the transition from 98% rye to 51% rye took place, but it appears that it happened around the same time that Majestic transitioned to making mostly bourbons- 1953. For decades, Maryland rye, which built its reputation on making pure rye whiskey with no corn at all, was straying from tradition and adding corn to their mashbills. To be precise, Majestic’s mashbill was 51% rye, 34% corn, 11% barley malt, and 4% rye malt.

Majestic shut down production in 1972, though the aging stocks continued to be bottled into the 80s. By 1982, “Pikesville Maryland Rye” became “Pikesville Supreme Rye.” The whiskey in those “Supreme” bottles was no longer from Majestic’s warehouses, it came from Michter’s Distillery in Schaefferstown, Pennsylvania, much to the chagrin of MD rye drinkers. Pikesville rye was sold to Heaven Hill brands in 1982, soon after the transition of its contents to Michter’s. Standard Distillers continued to look for sources for their other rye brands where they could.

Heaven Hill relaunched Pikesville Rye in 2015. Their mashbill is 51% Rye, 39% Corn, 10% Malted Barley. Note the similarity to Majestic’s post 1950s recipe, with the exception of no rye malt being used. It is a completely different product bearing little resemblance to Majestic/Standard’s Pikesville Rye and bearing absolutely NO resemblance whatsoever to the original Pikesville brand that existed before Prohibition. Heaven Hill uses the same distillate to make Rittenhouse Rye (a famous Pennsylvania brand) and Pikesville Rye (a famous Maryland brand). While these brands have no hope of ever being similar to their original flavor profile, we can always hope that Pennsylvania’s and Maryland’s modern distillers will pick up that mantle that was dropped so many years ago.

So how SHOULD we define Maryland rye? I would describe it this way. 

Maryland rye whiskey was whiskey that was made in Maryland. Until 1958, it was:
1. A sweet mashed whiskey
2. When distilled in Maryland, it was usually rye and rye malt, and often included barley malt in small quantities. Corn was not generally used, but every distillery was different. 
3. When made in a Maryland blending house, it was usually a combination of straight rye whiskeys with additional oils and flavors to taste.  Many of the pure rye whiskeys used in these blends were manufactured in Pennsylvania. 
4. Manufactured using chamber stills or pot stills. 
5. Usually matured in heated warehouses.   

After 1958, Maryland rye whiskey was:
1. A sweet mashed rye whiskey made in Maryland.
2. The rye mashbill began to include over 30% corn. 
3. Manufactured using column stills.
4. Usually matured in unheated warehouses.

If this definition seems like too much, just consider how much time people commit to reciting the full definition for bourbon.

It’s up to Maryland’s modern rye whiskey distillers to determine for themselves how they’d like to interpret what Maryland rye whiskey should be going forward.