Our 7th batch of Oxford Rye Whisky, Easy Ryder is made for good times and easy drinking. A blend of nine unique casks, including American Oak of varying toasts, chars, sizes and cooperages, and Moscatel Roxo for its sweet, fresh flavours, the resulting whisky is creamy with notes of pastry, chocolate, refreshing spice and a pronounced savoury character.
Our biggest release yet, using the grain and distillery character as a backbone, the oak complexity of the eight American Oak casks merges with the sweet and fresh flavours from the Moscatel Roxo fortified wine cask from Setúbal, Portugal.
Tasting notes
AROMA: Baked apples and pineapple complement herbal and refreshing spices with notes of Dolce de leche, torched creme brûlée, croissant, cocoa butter, white chocolate and bog butter.
PALATE: Hints of custard, biscuit, hazelnut, biscotti and white chocolate.
FINISH: Pepper, mint, vanilla and subtle smoke.
OVERALL: Baked desserts and herbal spices.
THE CASK STORY
Let Easy Ryder take you on a journey through our grains and our distillery with this blend of specially selected casks. Each cask has its own story, whether the cooperage, size, filling strength, age or warehouse. After 3 to 4 years of maturation, the cask impact on the new make has produced nine different spirits with different flavours merging to create this smooth, unique whisky.
The nine casks blended to create this release are:
Cask #23
American Oak
Heavy Char - 3 years and 10 months
130L @ 59.0% filled
119L @ 59.5% harvested
Cask #24
American Oak
Heavy Char - 3 years and 10 months
130L @ 59.0% filled
119L @ 57.5% harvested
Cask #37
American Oak
Grade 1 Char - 3 years and 10 months
225L @ 59.0% filled
187L @ 60.7% harvested
Cask #39
American Oak
Grade 1 Char - 3 years and 7 months
225L @ 57.3% filled
203L @ 57.1% harvested
Cask #40
American Oak
Grade 1 Char - 3 years and 5 months
230L @ 60.0% filled
212L @ 57.5% harvested
Cask #41
American Oak
Grade 1 Char - 3 years and 5 months
231L @ 60.0% filled
213L @ 57.9% harvested
Cask # 55
American Oak
Grade 1 Char - 3 years and 4 months
228L @ 59.0% filled
212L @ 58.2% harvested
Cask #59
American Oak
Heavy Char - 3 years and 4 months
226L @ 59.0% filled
210L @ 58.6% harvested
Cask # 295
Moscatel Roxo de Setúbal
3 years and 1 month (total)
210L @ 58.2% filled
208L @ 56.5% harvested
Previously in American Oak Heavy Char for 2 years
225L @ 59.0% filled
210L @ 58.2% racked
“Our flavour keeps evolving and slowly showing heritage grains’ true character as we continue our journey through time and flavour, rooted in our Oxfordshire surroundings. Creamy, pastry notes alongside chocolate and refreshing spices have created a golden, smooth spirit perfect for this time of year.”
IT ALL BEGINS WITH A GOOD HARVEST
Here at The Oxford Artisan Distillery, responsible farming will always be the first stage in our whisky making; taking our time, regenerating the land and supporting biodiversity with every bottle.
The organic heritage grain used for this batch was harvested in the Autumn of 2017, just after we threw open the doors to our distillery for the first time. The first casks of rye whisky were laid down within months.
It was a diverse maslin grain harvest, such is the result of letting nature take its course in a healthy, diverse field, with several different grains growing together including multiple ancient heritage rye strains, wheat strains and even a few oats and a few thistles. It is this authenticity, transported straight from our fields, that gives our whisky its flavour. We’re farming a new approach to spirits.
Rye is amazingly powerful and will always bring certain characteristics, but where our whisky is rooted in American Rye Whiskey it is certainly not American Rye Whiskey. A long fermentation in Hungarian oak vats has contributed fruity and creamy notes and toasty sourdough crust flavours come courtesy of flaking the grain in a centenary mill, rather than true milling.
As our grains ferment in our mixed culture, a lovely butter dimension comes to life and influenced by distillation and maturation, it metamorphoses from custard and pastry to white chocolate and bog butter as an earthy expression of the grain and the field. The pronounced savoury character of this release is the result of the sandy soils from Oxford combined with the sandy soils by the sea in Setúbal.
“Anything coming out of The Oxford Artisan Distillery is going to be good.”
Spirits Communicator of the Year
“English whisky just got even more interesting.”
OUR GRAINS
We use rye, wheat and barley grain, all historically fascinating and grown from varieties that were common before 1904, when the advent of modern farming changed how crops were sown and grown.
Our heritage grain is grown sustainably, eschewing pesticides, chemical fertilisers and even manuring. There is low to no crop rotation and the crop is undersown with clover. All of this contributes to an abundance of wildflowers, insects and birds across our farms.
HERITAGE POPULATIONS
In the past, farmers grew genetically-diverse landraces that adapted to local growing conditions over many generations. Our ‘heritage populations’ are also diverse, resilient and adaptable. Each plant in the field is different, creating a crop which is more vigorous, healthy and hardy than modern monoculture crops – without the need for chemicals.
Every part of our landrace sustains the agro-ecosystem – from microorganisms in the soil, to insects buzzing and birds flying above.