This American single malt comprises five types of whiskies made with eleven barley varieties – including a vintage English variety from the 1820s – and matured in a multitude of cask types.
We bring you NEW RIFF SOUR MASH SINGLE MALT. It’s likes have not been seen before in Kentucky, a project whose scope and complexity likely rivals any malt whiskey program in the country and perhaps even in Auld Scotland itself. It hasn’t been done before…but it will be done again, next year, with a second edition, and every year after that. Every year we get better at this riff, adding new tones, new speakers, new whiskey-amplifiers, new tunings. The SMSM project is very much about us living up to the statement on the back of every bottle: A New Riff on an Old Tradition. With this whiskey project, we have turned our all-copper column beer still as an interpretive lens examining the malted barleys and malt whiskey traditions of the world, and we are not stopping now—Sing on, brother, Play on, drummer!—the Malt whiskeys of New Riff Distilling are just getting started!
Blending Statistics for the 2023 Sour Mash Single Malt:
SMP1 Maris Otter: 16.8%
SMP2 Golden Promise: 35.5%
SMP3 Barleywine: 9.1%
SMP4 Belgian Quad: 27.8%
SMP5 Peated: 10.8%
Sherry/Red Wine/Brandy casks (across all SMP types): 38.3%
Tasting Notes
There are notes of red berries on the palate – hinting to ex-wine casks – with baked bread, cocoa powder and bergamot leading to a very gentle smoky finish.
About New Riff
Established 2014.
We are a new riff on an old tradition, that tradition or theme being Kentucky Bourbon. Founded in 2014 by Ken Lewis, a visionary Kentucky liquor retailer and entrepreneur, New Riff is led by a team of corporate refugees ranging from craft beer to politics and more. New Riff crafts a range of whiskeys—Bourbon, Rye, and eventually Malted Rye and a host of specialty recipes—as well as Kentucky Wild Gin. Our mission is simple: to someday be counted among the world’s great small distilleries. Becoming one of the great small distilleries of the world is a long term play, with no exact ring to win, or title to be declared.
We are independently owned by one family, and that independence, the freedom from outside pressures and interests has allowed us to make an unforeseen declaration for quality: for perhaps the first time since the inception of the Bottled in Bond Act in 1897, a Kentucky sour mash whiskey distillery has committed itself exclusively to that quality standard, the world’s highest. And we proudly lift that bar even higher by bottling without chill filtration. We stand behind this combination of classic American entrepreneurship and ingenuity; passion and knowledge born from one of the world’s great spirit regions; and a talented team individually committed to doing things the right way.
We are inspired by the great Bourbon makers of the past and the wider tradition in Kentucky—but we will play our own riff, on the Sour Mash Kentucky Regimen, both with our standard of Bottled in Bond Without Chill Filtration, and through applying that production regimen to wholly new styles of Kentucky whiskey. Yet we also observe the tremendous whiskey history of Greater Cincinnati, and we inhale that rye-rich backstory as well. At the end of the day, despite playing a free hand to improvise and create Kentucky whiskey anew, we uphold above all else the time-honored Sour Mash Kentucky Regimen: we believe it’s a fantastic way to make whiskey, fully the equal of the traditions of the world’s great whiskeys.
