Review: New Riff Kentucky Straight Rye 8 Years Old (2024)

Kentucky’s craft darling New Riff has been rolling hard eights lately. Their limited-edition High Note Collection featured a pair of 8-year-old offerings last fall, followed by a more widely available 8-year-old bourbon in the spring and now this, an 8-year-old expression of their Kentucky straight rye. This is the same 95/5 recipe rye that New Riff unveiled way back in 2019, and while it has still been distilled and aged by the Covington-based distillery, it doesn’t carry the bottled in bond designation like those earliest offerings owing to the need to blend two distilling seasons to allow for a wider release (also true for the 8-year-old bourbon). We were really impressed by the younger rye when it debuted. How does it taste at twice the age?

The nose is less green and bright than the original. Gone are the bell pepper and citrus notes with that added barrel aging contributing layers of warm baking spice, toffee, and seasoned oak instead. There’s still plenty of vibrant rye spice at work, however, with top notes of minted syrup, black tea, and cracked peppercorn that only build as things open. It’s an exceptionally balanced and soothing aroma. On the palate, things kick off with more pepper and baking spice, a bit of cool wintergreen, and quite a lot of oak. It’s surprisingly fresh for an eight-year-old rye and only becomes more so on the midpalate with lemon balm and green tea arriving in time. The spice builds across the sip as do the barrel notes which sharpen just a bit into a generous finish of pine resin, cloves, and pink peppercorn. I might still favor the younger rye just a bit more, but this is another impressive, well-aged addition to the New Riff lineup.

100 proof.

A- / $70

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