A few years ago, I attended a panel on getting American single-malt recognized as an official whiskey type by the TTB.
The American Single Malt Whiskey Commission—an industry group that includes some of the best-known single-malt producers this side of the pond—hosted the panel. The commission’s sole purpose was to define American single-malt whiskey so that it could be officially recognized—which finally happened in January.
This is the definition they came up with:
- made from 100 percent malted barley
- distilled entirely at one distillery
- mashed, distilled, and matured in the United States
- matured in oak casks no larger than 700 liters each
- distilled to no more than 160 proof (80 percent ABV)
- bottled at 80 proof (40 percent ABV) or higher
At the sight of those proposed rules, people cheered—but not me. I sat back in my chair pondering their purpose. In my mind, they were far too lax and open-ended. According to these rules, as a consumer, I’d have to accept that a single-malt whiskey matured for 20 years in an oloroso sherry cask would belong in the same category as one matured in a five-gallon, heavy-char virgin oak cask for three months.
It was an impossible mental leap for me. How could those two examples—admittedly extreme—technically be considered the same “style” of whiskey?
The Story of Monongahela Rye
Fast-forward to the past year: I’ve been in discussions with a small group of western Pennsylvania distillers who are working to define and protect the term “Monongahela rye whiskey.” And it’s within the context of this experience that I more fully appreciate the trials that the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission must have faced to get their rules on the books.
What I initially failed to understand about the single-malt commission’s purpose was that they were simply trying to codify a type of whiskey for labeling. What they were not doing was defining American single-malt as a “style.” And, in my mind, American single-malt was a style and not just a whiskey type. That’s the delineation with which I’ve been struggling recently, as we explore the path of defining Monongahela rye.
For a lot of folks in my neck of the woods—that’s western Pennsylvania—Monongahela rye is an important term. It connotes a significant era of whiskey history, one before Prohibition, when brown liquor freely flowed from the Monongahela watershed and surrounding regions.
Rye whiskey from this region was America’s first whiskey love affair. Throughout much of the 1800s, whiskeys from western Pennsylvania commanded more attention and dollars than most of Kentucky’s bourbon-biased counterparts. Instead of Beam and Jack, it was names such as Guckenheimer, Sam Thompson, Dillinger, and Overholt that were on the lips of the era’s whiskey cognoscenti.
But then Prohibition came around, and it dealt Pennsylvania distillers—and rye whiskey in general—an especially bad hand. Around the end of Prohibition, Franklin Roosevelt signed the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) into law as part of his New Deal policy agenda, aimed at helping American farmers and industries through the pain of the Great Depression. The AAA offered subsidies for a variety of crops, including corn. Rye, however, was not on the list.
There are many reasons why Monongahela rye nearly went extinct, but the AAA certainly didn’t help the situation.
The Regional Rye Revival
Here in the 21st century, we’ve been witnessing a rye-whiskey renaissance. Distillers, consumers, and the bartending community are all rightly interested in rye.
According to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), sales of rye increased by nearly 1,300 percent from 2009 to 2019; it also went from a mere 1 percent of total U.S. whiskey sales to 7 percent in 2022. While I doubt that we’ll see rye rise to its former glory as America’s preferred whiskey darling anytime soon, those numbers are encouraging to those of us keen on working with this humble grain.
Alongside the resurgence in rye, some of the rye styles of yore have re-emerged—along with a few modern interpretations—all vying for the thirsty consumer’s dollar. Some of these styles have now been codified in various ways at the state level.
In the mid-teens, a band of New York distillers pushed to establish “Empire rye” as a whiskey style. To be considered Empire rye, a whiskey must meet the following criteria:
- It must conform to the New York Farm Distiller (Class D) requirement that 75 percent of the mash bill be New York grain; in this case, that 75 percent must be rye grown in New York state, whether raw, malted, or a combination.
- The remaining 25 percent of the mash bill may be composed of any raw or malted grain, New York–grown or otherwise.
- It must be distilled to no higher than 160 proof.
- It must be aged for at least two years in charred, new oak barrels, at no more than 115 proof at time of entry.
- It must be mashed, fermented, distilled, barreled, and aged at a single New York state distillery.
- To be called “blended Empire rye,” it must be blended from 100 percent Empire rye whiskeys.
On July 1, 2021, Indiana became the latest state to enact an official definition for their regional take on rye. To be called “Indiana rye,” the whiskey must be made in that state from a mash bill of at least 51 percent rye and distilled to no higher than 160 proof. The resulting new-make spirit must be completely matured in Indiana for at least two years in new, charred white-oak barrels, with a maximum entry proof of 125. The finished whiskey must be bottled at no less than 80 proof.
These two somewhat recent bits of whiskey legislation provide some context for our group to work on defining Monongahela rye for a modern audience. To get the ball rolling, however, we first need to discuss what Monongahela rye was and what made it different.
What Makes It Monongahela?
Broadly, Monongahela rye was rye whiskey produced in close proximity to the Monongahela watershed, which extends from southwestern Pennsylvania into West Virginia and northwestern Maryland.
The heyday of this expression was the second half of the 19th century and the years until Prohibition in 1920. There were occasional murmurings of Old Monongahela in the years afterward but—as with other styles of rye whiskey—it appeared that the final nails had been driven into its coffin.
Monongahela ryes were generally “big” whiskeys—chewy and oily in texture, with a heavy oak profile and abundant rye character. Pre-Prohibition bottles in good condition are rare, but they do exist. I’ve been fortunate to try quite a few over the past several years, and I can attest that Monongahela rye was something different and wholly unapologetic in the glass—a whiskey-lover’s whiskey, through and through.
So, what do we know about how it was made?
Let’s start with the mash bill, which was commonly about 80 percent raw rye and 20 percent malted barley. It was rare for rye levels to get much higher than that, with the exception of a few “all ryes” that were 100 percent rye. Contrary to popular belief, there was actually quite a range of mash-bill percentages and grains used—and it wasn’t uncommon to see a portion of wheat included. The one thing we can say for certain is that the malted grain percentage was high enough to convert the mash without using exogenous enzymes—which, after all, didn’t exist yet. Even the all-rye mashes included a healthy amount of malted rye, so that conversion would have completely occurred.
The variety of rye used would most likely have been an open-pollinated heirloom of some sort. Commodity agriculture was still in its infancy, so distillers worked with local and regional farmers to source their grains until the railroads opened the prairies to outside commerce.
Monongahela rye was a product of sweet-mash fermentation—as of 1894, not one Pennsylvania distillery was sour-mashing. The distillers didn’t hold back stillage for the next mash. They did rely on large pot and/or chamber stills. In Pennsylvania and the surrounding regions, we didn’t use column stills—we left those things for Kentucky to play with. (There’s nothing wrong with column stills, per se, but they do produce a chemically different style of distillate.)
Maturation took place in steam-heated masonry warehouses using a low entry proof of about 101 going into barrels, which ranged from 35 to 48 gallons in capacity. While many of the whiskeys were likely sold at younger ages, older versions could see a dramatic final barrel proof above 140 after seven years. Those steam-heated warehouses really packed a punch.
These days, many of the aforementioned techniques simply don’t exist on any true scale. To the best of my knowledge, there is only one Pennsylvania distillery using a chamber still, only one distillery that has any barrels between 35 and 48 gallons, and there’s only one steam-heated warehouse in the state—Iron City ticks all those boxes.
Those historical quirks are only pieces of the larger puzzle—modern Monongahela does exist.
One need look no further than distillers such as Liberty Pole, which makes an excellent whiskey under the Monongahela banner. They produce their Old Monongahela Rye using 61 percent rye, 13 percent malted rye, 13 percent wheat, and 13 percent malted barley. They have a low final distillation proof off their pot still—about 130—and it goes into the barrel at 108 proof. After four-plus years, you get a big whiskey that’s not shy on presenting its base grain. Bottled at 54 percent ABV, it’s a belter for sure—and one that I’m always happy to have in my glass.
“The period we focus on is the late 18th century, during the Whiskey Rebellion [1791–1794],” says Liberty Pole founder Jim Hough. “While the pre-Prohibition era is a bit more well-known in terms of likely mash bills, barrel storage, heated warehouses, etcetera, the late 1700s are less documented. One of the earliest references to Monongahela rye was when Hugh Henry Brackenridge, a former state assemblyman, explicitly mentioned the barrel-aged version of the whiskey, referring to it as ‘old whiskey.’”
Hough says that in their view, 18th century Monongahela rye whiskey was mostly made of rye—“although, in reality, those farmers would likely have added whatever other surplus grains they had,” he says—and would have been sweet-mashed and pot-distilled in the Monongahela Valley.
Defining Monongahela Rye, Today
My feeling is that Monongahela rye is effectively a style and should be treated as such. Any definition should be strict—but not so strict as to curb innovation in the category. It’s a delicate line to walk.
On a call with a few distillers and historians several weeks back, one suggestion was that perhaps the best place to start would be to define Pennsylvania whiskey first, then tease out the definition of Monongahela from there. Here, I think we can safely look to other states’ whiskey definitions for inspiration. Pennsylvania’s might go something like this:
In order to be called “Pennsylvania whiskey,” the mash must be composed of 51 percent grains grown and purchased in the state of Pennsylvania. The resulting spirit must be distilled at no higher than 160 proof (80 percent ABV). The whiskey must be completely matured in Pennsylvania in charred new oak with a maximum barrel entry proof of 125 (62.5 percent ABV).
See? That wasn’t so bad. So, from there, we can build the definition of Monongahela rye. The following is my personal proposal, and it is in no way meant to represent the thoughts or beliefs of any other Pennsylvania distiller.
To be called “Monongahela rye,” the whiskey must meet the following criteria:
- Its mash should be at least 70 percent rye (malted and/or raw).
- The mash must include at least 15 percent malted grains.
- At least 51 percent of the grain must be grown within the state of Pennsylvania.
- Distillation must occur in either a pot or chamber still, and it must be distilled to no higher than 145 proof.
- The spirit must be completely matured in Pennsylvania for at least two years in new, charred white-oak barrels, with a maximum entry proof of 110.
- The spirit may be filtered to remove barrel sediment, but the use of carbon and/or chill filtration is not permitted.
- The spirit must be bottled at a minimum of 90 proof.
- The bottle must list the name of the distillery and the distilled spirits plant (DSP).
- A third party may not purchase spirit and use the term “Monongahela rye.” To use the term, the spirit must be bottled and sold by the original distiller.
To me, this definition ticks enough of the historical boxes to feel legit without being too exclusionary or blocking the path to innovation in the category. Yet there will most assuredly be pushback—that’s how these things go. By definition, categories are exclusionary. But if you aren’t going to be a little exclusive, then what’s the point in defining the style in the first place?
Then there is the issue of enforcement. Many distillers—including me—don’t enjoy the idea of too much regulatory overreach into our affairs. However, if you’re going to define the category by passing it through a state legislature, then you’ve got to have a way to make sure people are in compliance. Otherwise, what’s to stop just anyone from putting “Monongahela rye” on the bottle? Isn’t that supposed to be the whole point of this exercise—to protect the term?
This is where I think the judicious use of the state’s distillers’ guild could come into play, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Herman Mihalich is the founder and distiller of Dad’s Hat rye whiskey in Bristol, Pennsylvania. Many of us consider Herman to be the godfather of modern Pennsylvania rye. He gets a ton of well-earned respect from the industry (and his rye is damn tasty, too).
“The Pennsylvania Distillers Guild could house the committee who reviews and certifies the distillery candidates,” Mihalich says. “The approved distilleries would then be able to use a trademarked logo on their bottles and advertising.”
It’s a solid idea. And who doesn’t love a committee?
Regardless of how the process moves forward, I can say it’s been a learning experience. At the conclusion of this exercise, is everyone going to be happy? Probably not, and unfortunately there’s likely no way to make it happen without overly diluting the ultimate aim of the project.
However, just like great whiskey, these things take a lot of time and effort. Hopefully it will all be worth it in the end.