Ryegrass Whiskey

Description

The world’s first ryegrass whiskey is now available. This is not the rye grain that many of you are familiar with – this is ryegrass, the plant grown for turf and forage here in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Actually, we are the ryegrass capitol of the world and produce much of the planet’s grass seed. During previous biofuel research using ryegrass, we learned that there is quite a bit of usable sugar in the grass at certain growth stages. Where there is sugar, there can be fermentation! We made the beer and it was awful due the salts that the grass plant also takes up. We then distilled the beer and got a whole different animal. The resulting flavor profile that is hard to describe – maybe a rhum agricole or a lighter Highland single malt – earthy and, yes, sort of grassy. We then created a whiskey with a ryegrass component and put it into a new 30 gallon charred American Oak barrel.