I take a little offense, now and then, to the way rye whiskey has a tendency to be marketed. Because bourbon sucks all of the air and the energy out of the room when talking about American whiskey in general, rye can sometimes feel uncomfortable in its monolithic shadow. And because there’s a sizable percentage of the American whiskey drinkers out there who consume bourbon and more or less nothing else, that lack of curiosity sometimes leads to rye whiskey’s marketing revolving around bourbon, like a celestial body orbiting its star. This results in oh-so-many pitches or bits of marketing copy akin to “Oh, this is a rye for bourbon drinkers,” rather than simply celebrating the style for its own merits. And yet, there are indeed those rare instances where I’m tasting a new rye and legitimately do think “Hey, this would have a deep appeal to bourbon geeks.” And the new Knob Creek 10 Year Rye Whiskey is definitely one of those instances.
This is a permanent new addition to Jim Beam’s Small Batch Knob Creek lineup, weighing in at the usual 50% ABV (100 proof) of the core Knob Creek lineup, but bumping up the age statement modestly, from the already generously aged 7 years of the flagship Knob Creek Rye, to a full 10 years in newly charred oak. The company thus calls this their first extra-aged rye (for Knob CreeK), though Beam has recently also experimented with extra-aged versions of Old Overholt as well.
For the Knob Creek brand, it’s the latest in the lineup’s evolution toward proudly embracing age statements as a guiding ethos. The American whiskey boom of the 2010s led to some storied brands losing their age statements, the flagship Knob Creek Small Batch Bourbon among them. That 9-year age statement was then regained by Knob Creek Small Batch Bourbon bottles from 2020 onward, even as the company introduced its first statement beyond that, the particularly tasty Knob Creek 12 Year Bourbon. Subsequent special releases have pushed things even farther, in the form of Knob Creek 15 and Knob Creek 18. On the rye side of the spectrum, meanwhile, Knob Creek Small Batch Rye had always been a non-age-stated product until 2023, when the company unexpectedly made its 7-year age statement official. It would not be surprising to find that this permanent 10 year rye addition was effectively the spiritual counterpart to Knob Creek 12 Year Bourbon, as they share a similar price point. Note that this could imply even further aged special releases, down the line.
As for this new expression, though, let’s get to tasting.