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New Riff brings solid, straight-forward, no monkey-business Rye Whiskey to the table at barrel proof.

Ken Lewis has been selling Spirits for more than thirty years. He owned and ran one of the most successful retail stores in the country — The Party Source in Bellevue, Kentucky. He sold the company to his employees in 2014 and used the funds to launch New Riff Distillery with co-founder Jay Erisman in Newport that same year — just across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio. As head distiller Brian Sprance was distilling Spirits and laying down casks for aging, they sourced Spirits from MGP of Indiana and sold them under the O.K.I. brand (now retired). They are now releasing their own complete line of house-crafted Spirits and are an official stop on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.

Don’t you just love it when a distiller sets out to do something "right" from the get-go and doesn’t try to mess around? New Riff Single Barrel Rye is a perfect example of that. It’s 100% rye (5% malted). It’s aged at least four years in the proper charred new oak barrels. And it’s bottled at a barrel proof of 56.2% ABV without chill-filtration or other nonsense which means that you can do just about anything you want with it and be happy — on the rocks, in a cocktail, whatever. As a single barrel Spirit, there will be subtle differences from cask to cask, but it is designed to be a robust expression of Rye Whiskey magic and that’s what it is.

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