\nCanadian Club 100% Rye: 8.33 \u00b1 0.43 on 14 reviews ($)
\nCrown Royal Northern Harvest Rye: 8.58 \u00b1 0.35 on 16 reviews ($$)
\nHigh West Double Rye: 8.70 \u00b1 0.29 on 13 reviews ($$)
\nHigh West Rendezvous Rye: 8.91 \u00b1 0.31 on 14 reviews ($$$$)
\nKnob Creek Small Batch Straight Rye: 8.54 \u00b1 0.38 on 16 reviews ($$$)
\nLot 40: 8.90 \u00b1 0.36 on 20 reviews ($$)
\nMasterson’s Straight Rye 10yo: 8.88 \u00b1 0.41 on 17 reviews ($$$$)
\nMichter’s Single Barrel Straight Rye: 8.70 \u00b1 0.45 on 10 reviews ($$$)
\nMillstone 100 Rye: 8.71 \u00b1 0.31 on 9 reviews ($$$$)<\/strong>
\nPikesville Straight Rye: 8.73 \u00b1 0.48 on 13 reviews ($$$$)
\nRittenhouse Rye 100 Proof: 8.58 \u00b1 0.23 on 15 reviews ($$)
\nSazerac Straight Rye: 8.59 \u00b1 0.46 on 13 reviews ($$)
\nWhistlepig 10yo: 8.85 \u00b1 0.43 on 15 reviews ($$$$)
\nWillett Family Estate Rye (all ages): 8.70 \u00b1 0.29 on 12 reviews ($$$$)<\/p>\n
That is a good score for a rye whisky. There aren’t a lot of reviews for the other various Millstone single malts in my database, but here are how a couple compare:<\/p>\n
Millstone 12yo Sherry Cask: 8.95 \u00b1 0.25 on 7 reviews ($$$$)
\nMillstone 8yo French Oak: 7.95 \u00b1 0.67 on 4 reviews ($$$$)<\/p>\n
As a fan of Canadian and American ryes, I was curious to see how this rye import from the Netherlands would compare.\u00a0 My sample comes from a swap with TOModera on Reddit. Here is what I find in the glass:<\/p>\n
Colour<\/strong>: Dark amber<\/p>\n Nose<\/strong>: Sweet syrupy rye, with bold in-your-face spicy notes (cinnamon and cloves in particular). Pepper and ginger too. Caramel and toffee, with honey and a bit of vanilla (all suggesting charred virgin American oak aging). Limited fruits – a bit of apple and some cherry (very American-like). Fudge and dark chocolate, with a bit of anise. May be some subtle rye notes peeking through, but buried under that virgin oak avalanche. It’s very strong, with unusually heavy ethanol nose hair singe. A helluva nose! Water dulls a little of the ethanol, but brings up acetone instead.<\/p>\n Palate<\/strong>: Strong up-front wallop of ethanol heat – and that spicy rye flavour (cinnamon and pepper in particular, same as the nose).\u00a0 Thick honey and caramel dominate the mid-palate, with the same fruits as the nose. Something mildly vegetal, plus some artificial sweetener notes on the way out. Syrupy mouthfeel, but with more tongue tingle than I would like. Seems a bit young for a 8+ year old whisky. Water only helps a little with the ethanol burn (and unfortunately reduces the syrupy texture far more). It doesn’t bring up anything new, so I would recommend against water here (or use it very sparingly).<\/p>\n Finish<\/strong>: Moderately long. Cinnamon redhots dominate initially, but slowly fade and the other rye spices become more prominent (cloves, nutmeg). A bit of earthy tar builds over time, adding to the anise (not as bad as it sounds, I kind of like the funkiness actually). Some astringency on the finish (but no real bitterness). Water has no real effect here.<\/p>\n I suspect it would likely appeal to those who favour bold, oak-dominated bourbons and ryes. This is kind of what I imagine an Elijah Craig small batch rye would taste like, if such a thing existed. It is certainly a lot more American rye-like than Canadian. Personally, I prefer the softer and more subtle floral notes of something like Lot 40<\/a> here in Canada.<\/p>\n Dominic of Whisky Advocate<\/a> really loves this one, as do some of the reviewers on Reddit (i.e., this review<\/a> and this one<\/a>). More moderate scores come from Jim Murray, Nathan the Scotch Noob<\/a>, Serge of Whisky Fun<\/a>, Jan of Best Shot Whisky<\/a>, and TOModera<\/a> on Reddit. There are no particularly negative scores among my panel of reviewers, although I would personally score this whisky a little lower than the Meta-Critic average.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Millstone is the whisky brand produced by Dutch distiller Zuidam. A family-run business, they make a number of distilled products – including both rye and single malt whiskies. The product name here is a bit of cute play on their fixation with the number 100 – it is made with 100% rye grain, in 100% small copper pot stills, matured<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[121,25],"class_list":["post-3683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-whiskies","tag-dutch","tag-rye"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3683"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3781,"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683\/revisions\/3781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/whiskyanalysis.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Millstone.100.Rye_.png\")
This is a heavy-hitting rye. I’m surprised that water does so little to tame the burn. It really is a monster that steamrolls ahead, regardless of dilution. It has a bit of funk that some may find off-putting, but is actually kind of interesting. I was rather hoping to see more fruit develop, though.<\/p>\n