If you taste a certain something in whiskey, says Nathan Perry, the master distiller at J. Rieger & Co., “Guess what: You’re right.”
Rieger’s tasting committee is stocked with professionally certified whiskey tasters—plus Perry, who makes it. In the distillery’s new 90-proof Rieger Straight Bourbon Whiskey, the committee tasted orange marmalade, cracked pepper, and lightly toasted coconut, with a long finish hinting at mild tobacco and toffee. They’re right, but their palates are pretty tuned—some of them, like Perry, test aging whiskey when it’s still 140-proof.
You don’t need an expert’s palate to know there’s a lot to Rieger Straight Bourbon Whiskey—it has a body that goes down slowly, gently, before the kick. It tastes like a deep kiss that drags you up the street to something more exciting. Sipped straight, it’s a one-on-one date you desperately hope gets renewed; poured in dark soda, it’s meeting someone almost painfully interesting on a night out.
Big dogs such as Wild Turkey and Knob Creek can afford to put out straight bourbon whiskey for around $30. J. Rieger—the once-giant Kansas City distillery that folded in 1919 and awoke a little smaller in 2014—has sold a nationally acclaimed bottled-in-bond* version at a higher price point for the last few years. It’s 100-proof; compared to the 90-proof version, it tastes like a kiss and a smack, which some people are into.
But J. Rieger has grown and grown—they’re the “biggest small distillery” or the “smallest big distillery” you’ve ever seen, says co-founder Andy Rieger—and now, with added space and a unique sweet-mash, two-step distilling process, they can compete with the big dogs. As of this writing, the new straight bourbon whiskey is $30 at Total Wine & Spirits.
Perry and J. Rieger co-founder Ryan Maybee (another member of the tasting committee) say they have no preference on how you drink it. It can be a fine sipper or a mixer. They just wanted it to taste really, really good, and it does.