This post contains items gifted by The Oxford Artisan Distillery.
Over the past eighteen months, like many people during the pandemic, we’ve drunk more at home. With pubs and restaurants closed, it’s hardly surprising is it? Noticeably though we’ve enjoyed drinking more spirits than before, and have been experimenting to find a drink that we both like equally as much, rather than having a couple of bottles on the go.
So when I was offered the chance to try what’s described as “a unique English spirit” I was keen to find out more. MOH was also keen to try this telling me it would be like a bourbon - and that was before it even arrived.
When it arrived, it was confirmed as a ‘rye spirit’ and not a ‘rye whisky’ - you, like us might be wondering what the difference is. A ‘rye spirit’ must be under three years old - so a ‘rye spirit’ it is. Or a liquid rye as it’s described.
Want to know more?
I thought you might. It’s distilled from ancient heritage rye, a commonly cultivated crop in pre-industrial England. It’s distilled twice and rested in American oak barrels. The heritage grains are chosen for their flavour and are grown mostly within 50 miles of Oxford. That brings another dimension - sustainability - the grains also improve the quality of the land and the wildlife by the farming methods which avoids using all pesticides and uses traditional methods to manage the land.
And it tastes good too
It has a distinctive flavour - there’s definitely vanilla and spice. MOH has a better ‘nose’ than me and regularly identifies ingredients in food, whereas I’m much more “I like that” - and I liked this. Looking at the tasting notes there’s also sandalwood and the spice is described as “nutty and spicy notes”.
To start with we tried it neat as we’d drink whisky, which for me is with a splash of water. And it was very drinkable, and a nice warming feel so would work well for an end of meal digestif.
The bottle also suggested trying it as a long drink, with ginger ale, Angostura bitters and lime - and with a warm, sunny day this weekend gave us the perfect time to try this. After a mostly lazy day interspersed with chores, knowing we had plans to sit and enjoy the garden we’d spent time working on, was a very good plan.
So that’s what we did - moving to the end of the garden to catch the last of the sun, we enjoyed an Oxford Rye take on a dark and stormy - on a day that, thankfully, was far from dark and stormy. While it was good neat, in my opinion this was better.
* With thanks to The Oxford Artisan Distillery for providing The Oxford Rye for me to try for the purposes of this review, all views and opinions are my own.