Opening a distillery sounds like a dream. Opening it on a farm on 500 acres in Vermont sounds even dreamier. But the thing is, opening a distillery is a different beast than, say opening a restaurant or even a brewery. Where it takes a few weeks to make a beer you can sell, or a few minutes to go from a raw steak and cracked pepper to something you can serve a customer and get paid for, to distill and age whiskey you need years.
WhistlePig decided to be a distillery in 2007. So they started with someone else’s whiskey, namely a 10-year-old blending whiskey from Canada, and finished it, bottled it and marketed it. The great thing was, the whiskey was good. Thanks to the guidance of late master distiller Dave Pickerell, WhistlePig knew what they were doing.
But selling someone else’s stuff? That’s not the dream. The dream was to grow the rye, mash it, ferment it, distill it, age it, blend it, then sell it. Which is why their latest FarmStock Rye, Crop 003 is kind of a big deal. It marks the first time that a WhistlePig whiskey is made from a majority of whiskey they made themselves — from start to finish. With 52% WP 3-year-old rye, 31% 6-year whiskey, and 17% 10-year Canadian whiskey, Crop 003 is an aromatic rye with notes of vanilla, tobacco and toffee, with a warm rye finish. It’s a limited edition so get yourself a bottle soon and find out what a dream come true tastes like.
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