Kooper’s Whiskey Releases New Rye With Ultra-Long Finishing

Kooper’s Whiskey, the family-owned Texas whiskey brand, has taken the way most people think of secondary maturation and turned it on its head in their latest release. This started with sourcing rye whiskey distilled in Illinois at Koval Distillery, using a 100% rye mash bill, and bringing it to Texas. After one year of aging in new oak barrels, the Koopers transferred the whiskey to an ex-Buffalo Trace Bourbon barrel, which had been used for approximately seven years to make that brand of bourbon. Re-barreled, the rye was aged for a further nine years in the used wood.

The role of the Texas climate in bourbon maturation is often noted for producing an even more extreme cycle of squeezing whiskey into and out of the barrel wood, all while promoting fierce evaporation. By using spent wood in a prolonged secondary maturation, Kooper’s Whiskey would bypass the possibility over-oaking. Technically, the whiskey is also a single barrel.

“This whiskey tells our story better than anything we’ve released,” said Koopers Whiskey Master Blender Troy Kooper. “It starts with our roots at Koval Distillery in Chicago, where Michelle and I trained as distillers under Dr. Robert Birnecker. Koval gave us our start by allowing us access to unaged distillate while we were building our plans. But along the way, we fell in love with the art of aging, blending, and maturation—and that ultimately came to define who we are.”

The new whiskey is on sale in 375 ml, half-sized bottles for $50 a bottle. The production run was limited to just 231 bottles.