menu
We couldn’t be prouder to share our latest bottled in bond bourbon, a double gold medal winner at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, the largest and most prestigious spirit competition in the world.
As a bottled in bond spirit, this bourbon is held to a rigorous standard including being made by one distiller at a single distillery in one season. At J. Rieger & Co., Kansas City’s Original Distillery, that results in a unique expression of our location in the historic Electric Park District – the varied seasons, the aged barrels, even the vibrations of the trains passing by our front doors.
Distilled from corn, rye, and malted barley, our bourbon has aged six years in our rickhouse, and is our second offering of Rieger’s Straight Bourbon Whiskey Bottled in Bond since J. Rieger & Co. was reborn in 2014.
As the quintessential American spirit, distilling our own bourbon was our goal before ever even reopening J. Rieger & Co. As a young distiller in 2015, we began putting away barrels of bourbon – just a few a month – as it was all we could logistically produce at the time. But, as the years went on, we were able to start distilling more and more whiskey every year. Today, we are putting away 175 barrels a month.
That brings us to today. After six long years in 53-gallon American white oak barrels, the bourbon we created in 2016 and 2017 are finally ready. This batch of bourbon is bottled at 100 proof to meet the qualifiers to be designated as bottled in bond, the strictest category of American whiskey.
The bottling marks the eighth year of our bourbon program, and the second bottling. With our rickhouse stocked with thousands of barrels, we look forward to bringing you Rieger’s Bourbon for generations to come.
For our bourbon, we selected a mash bill of 56% corn, 30% rye, and 14% malted barley to create a classic bourbon that gives noticeable characteristics from a higher-than-average proportion of rye and malted barley. Each batch was distilled in our 750-gallon copper pot still before being put into 53-gallon American white oak barrels.
This bourbon was aged in our Kansas City rickhouse for a full six years before bottling. Adhering to bottled in bond guidelines, we selected 17 barrels distilled in the fall of 2016 as well as 52 barrels distilled in the spring of 2017 for this season.
Aromas of tart fruits upfront - lemon oil, apple pie, clove, and hints of maple. Flavors on the pallet led by sweet fruit including dark cherry and plum. A very rich, elegant, and buttery texture with flavors of cigar smoke, cornbread, and cotton candy. The finish is loaded with complex flavors of honey-cinnamon, dark-roast coffee, vanilla, caramel, and sea salt. There's a rich, malty, lingering effect that is reminiscent of a stout beer.
