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If your looking for a new kind of whisky which is smooth, nutty and spicy then I highly recommend Oxford Rye. What makes Oxford Rye’s special compared to other whisky’s is that their whisky is distilled using an ancient heritage rye, a crop which used to be commonly cultivated across the English countryside in pre-industrial times. Did you know to qualify as a pure rye spirit and not a rye whisky, a liquid must be under three years old, which Oxford Rye is.

I was gifted a bottle courtesy from The Oxford Artisan Distillery on a press related basis to sample their Oxford Rye whisky and I discovered not only is it great as a drink but works well within bakes.

The Oxford Artisan Distillery

In 1994 John Letts discovered over 200 almost perfectly preserved examples of traditional wheat and rye landraces in the bottom layers of thatched buildings dating from the late Medieval period (1375-1550 AD). His work showed that, in spite of poor soils, these ancient crops grew to over 1.5 metres tall and that if these fields had been manured crops it would have grown much taller and fallen over in the wind and rain, ruining the harvest.

Today, his fields are monocultures of uniform dwarf wheat varieties that are only a third of the height of older heritage lines, which can be seen in artwork from earlier centuries. The tall stems of older cereals are matched by their much larger root systems, which allows them to absorb moisture and nutrients from deep below the soil surface. This means they are better at surviving drought, but will also grow very tall and fall over if grown with fertilisers or in rich soil.

They produce whisky, gin and vodka.