When news broke last Fall that 80-proof Pikesville Rye was being discontinued, lots of locals were dismayed. Events were even planned to mourn the loss. That’s because we in Baltimore are a loyal bunch and Pikesville, though no longer distilled in our state, has a deep local history dating back to the 1890s.

It’s also because rye is experiencing quite the comeback.

Our region was once synonymous with rye whiskey (what bourbon is to Kentucky) and, though rye production was hit hard by Prohibition, it’s back with a vengeance. Bar patrons are ordering old fashioneds with rye, local distilleries (and athletic apparel CEOs) are getting in on the game, and “Maryland-style rye” has been resurrected as a spirits category all its own.

“It’s gone crazy recently,” says Michael Leeds, owner of Barfly’s in Riverside, which has the city’s largest whiskey selection (with 98 bottles of rye alone). “It never used to be a big thing in cocktails, but now a lot of people are asking for rye specifically.”

Bar managers are also seeing a change in who is doing the drinking.

“The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that the younger kids are drinking it now,” Leeds says. “Manhattans and bourbons in general were something your dad drank.”

Similarly, Loch Bar, which currently has about 450 whiskies on hand, has seen a huge boom in requests for rye. The bar even has a Maryland Free State flight with four 1-ounce rye pours for $30.

“You get all these rich, oaky flavors of vanilla and it has more of a spicy bite to it than a bourbon,” says Eric Smith, managing partner at Atlas Restaurant Group and head of the beverage program at Loch Bar. “It’s a great way to change it up in the colder months.”

While weather is one factor, many agree, it’s the emphasis on local that has helped the trend take off.

“People are drawn to it because of its rich Maryland history,” Smith says. “Wars and Prohibition caused it to recede. But, just like our city continues to fight back, rye is doing the same thing.”

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Tasting Notes

Sagamore Spirit Rye American Whiskey
Sagamore Spirit, founded by Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, is getting into the rye whiskey game, with its version
blending two mash bills—a high rye and a low rye. The result is a sweeter, smoother rye whiskey.

Lyon Distilling Free State Rye
This St. Michaels distillery might be better known for its rum production, but its rye whiskey is noteworthy. The 100-proof Maryland Free State Rye is aged in oak barrels for less than a year, resulting in a spicy flavor with hints of vanilla.

New Liberty Distilling Melvale Straight Rye
Inspired by the Melvale Distillery, which opened on Cold Spring Lane in the 1880s, Philadelphia-based New Liberty Distillery re-created the recipe. The 90-proof rye is sweet (honey, vanilla) and spicy (cinnamon, pepper).

One Eight Distilling Rock Creek Rye
Washington, D.C.-based One Eight Distilling just released the first grain-to-glass rye to be bottled in the District since Prohibition. Using local rye and corn and a copper pot still, the distillery’s 94-proof rye has a nutty finish and is ideal in cocktails.

When you order a pint of beer at a local taproom and take the first, crisp sip, you probably aren’t thinking about all the permits, zoning hearings, and bills that had to get approved in order for you to imbibe.

But, for the past few years, that has been top of mind for the Brewers Association of Maryland (BAM), as well as local lobbyists, senators, and delegates. And this past legislative session, they were able to push forth a big breakthrough in the craft beer industry.

The Brewery Modernization Act of 2019 (HB1010) was passed on Saturday, which updates the state’s beer laws by increasing taproom sales, production capabilities, self-distribution limits, and hours of operation.

“Job creation and economic impact has been our consistent message since we began this effort three years ago,” says BAM executive director Kevin Atticks. “Our tactics have been different—and last year things got unnecessarily heated—but there have always been legitimate concerns from legitimate entrepreneurs. This session, we didn’t ask for infinite numbers, but we still asked for increases that will give our brewers the possibility to grow.”

Atticks greatly credits the new regime in the General Assembly in Annapolis, as well as the support of local delegates and lobbyist Brad Rifkin for bringing the bill to fruition.

Under the new act, which goes into effect July 1, Class 5 beer manufacturers (think Union Craft, Monument City, Heavy Seas, etc.) will have increased taproom limits of up to 5,000 barrels a year. For Class 7 microbreweries (like The Brewer’s Art, Nepenthe Brewing), taproom limits have also been increased to 5,000 barrels a year and their production cap has nearly doubled to 45,000 barrels a year.

In addition, the new law will remove the guided tour requirement for carry-out beer at breweries (up to a case), allow Class 8 farm breweries to extend their hours until 10 p.m., loosen regulations on self-distribution, and make it possible for all classifications to now brew beer at an off-site location.

“A lot of breweries have found beautiful spots that they never thought they’d outgrow,” says Atticks. “This gives them the ability to grow, but not necessarily move and leave their original market.”

In tandem with this bill is an important breakthrough in the Beer Franchise Law Reform legislation, which updates distribution regulations that hadn’t been touched since 1974. Back then, the laws were established to protect mom and pop wholesalers (or distributors) in the case that giant, mega-breweries decided to walk away. That’s why 180 days notice and a showing of “good cause” had to be proven in order to sever contracts.

“The problem is, since the craft beer boom, we now have a reversal of power,” explains Atticks. “Wholesalers are now the big kahuna and breweries are the small guy. They need flexibility to find a new wholesaler or switch it up if it isn’t working out.”

Under the new law, effective January 2020, breweries that produce less than 20,000 barrels annually (almost all in the state of Maryland), may, without cause, be able to leave a wholesaler after providing just 45 days notice.

“It was nice to see that all parties—retailers, wholesalers, and brewers—were able to get together and agree to continue to move our industry forward,” says Hugh Sisson, the founder of Heavy Seas Beer, who has been championing beer legislation for decades. “At the end of the day, it is always best if the various stakeholders work together. After a couple years in a row being at loggerheads, I think everyone deserves credit for overcoming the issues.”

In addition, local stakeholders with the Maryland Distillers Guild made some strides in the spirits world. As of July 1, distilleries will be able to serve cocktails with an amended Class 1 license (similar to the existing Class 9 you see at Blackwater, Old Line, and Seacret’s), pouring up to 7,750 gallons annually.

“We’ve been involved in the process for years and it wasn’t easy to get this bill passed,” says Max Lents, co-owner of the Baltimore Spirits Company and founding member of the distillers guild. “This bill lets the local liquor board create a license for us, so it’s still a not a done deal, but at least we have a clear path now. This certainly gives us more freedom in the future.”

While all of the legislative language and facts and figures can feel wonky, Atticks says that the average drinker will definitely notice a change once the laws are enacted.

“Maryland beer will be more available,” he says. “That means you’ll be able to buy more at breweries and see more of it in beer stores. Clearly, the customers want it and [this session] the message was received. Reform is going to happen.”

Inside the sprawling metal shop that bears the family name, Joe Kavanagh watches as nephews Paul and Patrick Kavanagh huddle after hoisting a 12-foot steel beam—assisted by an overhead lift—onto an 18,000-pound, medieval wheel-like device for bending. (When you see buildings with cool curved walls or arches, this is the place where their support architecture takes its final shape.) “Sometimes you’ve got to let them figure it out for themselves,” says Joe, glancing over his shoulder.

The younger Kavanaghs, 31 and 28, respectively, represent the sixth generation to work in the business, a century-and-a-half-old institution struggling to stay afloat as President Trump’s tariffs wreak havoc on the cost of steel and aluminum. It’s not the first time national politics have threatened the company’s bottom line. Their ancestors made their first real money building and servicing distilleries in hard-drinking, post-Civil War Baltimore.

In fact, the original Joe Kavanagh—great-great-grandfather of the 54-year-old Joe now in charge—socked away enough dough to rebuild after his first plant, and much of the city, burned to the ground in 1904. (The name—Joseph Kavanagh Co. Practical Coppersmith—remains legible in huge, if weathered, block lettering at the former Pratt Street and Central Avenue location where they plied their trade for more than eight decades before moving to Dundalk.)

But the Great Baltimore Fire proved a minor setback compared to Prohibition—which was ratified 100 years ago this month. Half of their business was in distilleries.

Enter Jimmy Connolly, aka “Jack Hart,” who had married into the family a year earlier, wedding Kitty Kavanagh following his release from Sing Sing. Hart let it be known to Kitty’s male cousins, then running the operation, that he had connections if they wanted, or needed, to stay in the booze biz. And so, the Catholic, previously upstanding Kavanaghs became bootleggers—with Jack and Kitty eventually earning infamy as Baltimore’s Bonnie and Clyde. It’s all documented in taped family oral histories and news accounts, which the current Joe has spent years poring over.

“We’ve had our share of ‘colorful’ characters,” acknowledges Joe Kavanagh. “Kitty’s father shot a Baltimore bartender in the neck.” The Kavanaghs have seen tragedy, too. One ancestor quit and took off to Panama to work on the canal after his son and wife died. He succumbed to malaria in the Canal Zone.

Not content with mere bootlegging, Hart later became the subject of one of the biggest manhunts in the city’s history in the summer of 1922 after he and an accomplice robbed $7,263 in payroll from a local company, shooting and killing the company’s treasurer in the process. Apprehended at a Washington, D.C., hideout a month later, Hart attempted a half-dozen prison escapes, succeeding twice—first in 1924 by bending a pair of metal bars with an iron rod and then again in 1929 after cutting his way through three locks of his solitary confinement cell. “Using tools of his trade, not ours,” Kavanagh notes. The FBI kept Kitty under constant surveillance each time Hart went on the lam, but she never never tipped off police to his whereabouts. According to press accounts, she fainted once after being informed her husband had been captured.

Meanwhile, the rest of Kavanaghs kept making clandestine distilleries, secretly shipping them out to clients, likely via the Baltimore harbor, while also mixing their own rye whiskey.

Through Prohibition, the Depression, two World Wars, and too many recessions and crises to remember, the Kavanagh clan—more than two-dozen have worked here in the company’s history—kept at their legal work as well. They have contributed railings and fittings to everything from the Statue of Liberty to Oriole Park.

“I don’t want to lose this business. Not on my watch,” he continues. “I started working on Saturdays with Dad when I was 12. You know, I studied classical guitar for two years at Peabody. Everyone in the family is a musician. Patrick plays clarinet. Paul plays the trumpet and tuba. My uncle played the piano, and my dad sang. Nobody asked me to quit college and come full-time. This place just gets under your skin, and there wasn’t any reason to put it off any longer.

“This place was my destiny.”

Four years ago, Maryland native Brian Treacy, who was living in Arizona at the time, got a call from an unknown 410 number and correctly predicted who it might be. On the other end was longtime friend, and Under Armour CEO, Kevin Plank.

“Kevin talks fast when he’s excited,” Treacy said today. “He talked about this vision for restoring rye whiskey in Maryland and opening a distillery in Baltimore City. For two sentences, he sold it pretty well.”

Soon after, Treacy was on a plane to Baltimore and plans were underway for the Sagamore Spirit distillery, which up until now has been housed in the City Garage incubator space. But with a ribbon cutting today, the distillery opened the doors of its permanent location, along the waterfront in Port Covington. The distillery opens to the public Friday, April 21, from 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

“Today we celebrate the finished product,” Treacy said this morning at the ribbon-cutting, sharing a state with Sagamore Spirit co-founder Bill McDermond, Lieutenant Governor Boyd Rutherford, Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger, and Mayor Catherine Pugh. “The purpose of this distillery is to create a reason for people to come visit Baltimore, educate guests about rye whiskey production, and be a place for them to learn about our brand.”

Prior to the opening, Sagamore Spirit Rye was being distilled in Indiana, then shipped to Baltimore. Now all of the aging, production, bottling, tastings, and tours will take place inside 22,000-square-foot distillery building and the adjacent 27,000-square-foot processing building.

“This new space really allows us to own the authenticity from start to finish and scale up when the time is right,” said Treacy, joking that it will be another four years before the Maryland start-to-finish whiskey will be properly aged and ready to taste. “I’m excited for that day to come.”

For now, though, guests can tour the distillery that features the only 40-foot mirror-finished copper column still in the world, which maintains a constant state of distillation and was made in Louisville, Kentucky. 

The facility also features a 250-gallon copper pot still for experimental and seasonal releases, nine 6,500-gallon fermenting tanks, an 8,000-gallon beer wall, and a 6,000-gallon mash cooker. The other pièce de résistance is the 120-foot water tower, filled with spring-fed water from Sagamore Farm in Baltimore County.

A visitor’s center and merchandising area, as well as a few tasting rooms, make up the processing building. This weekend, guests can experience free tours of the two-story facility and taste three different expressions of Sagamore Rye. Starting on Monday, April 24, the experience will cost $15. 

“We really want to put Maryland back on the rye whiskey map,” Treacy said. “And we hope that projects like these will make Baltimore be viewed in a more positive light.”

“Sagamore’s spring water is iron free and fed from a limestone aquifer,” Treacy explained. “Limestone water is traditionally the best, and purest, way to make a rye whiskey.”

Once that process is complete, the whiskey is hand bottled and labeled and, recently, that has meant that family and neighbors of Sagamore staff have been coming in to help during the homestretch before bottles hit shelves on May 13.

As for the rye whiskey itself, it’s made up of two different mash bills (one with high rye and one with low), so the final product is a fine balance of spicy and sweet. The rye is a lot smoother than many small-batch whiskies on the market with dominant flavor notes of molasses and caramel. The spirit reminded us of a lower-proof Knob Creek rye, and would be ideal in an Old Fashioned or Manhattan cocktail.

“Expect our product to be in some of the best bars and restaurants around town,” Treacy said. “We’re aiming to end up in the places with craftier cocktail programs.”

Launch party plans are in the works and will be posted on Sagamore’s social media platforms once they’re firmed up. Not surprisingly, one place you’ll be guaranteed to find Sagamore rye? At the 141st Preakness Stakes on May 21.

“All of these ventures have one thing in common,” Treacy said of Plank Industries. “And that’s celebrating the unique heritage and history of Maryland.”