We couldn’t be prouder to share our latest release of Rieger’s Straight Bourbon Whiskey Bottled in Bond, a double gold medal winner at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, the biggest 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.
