Kings County Distillery Announces New Flagship Offering, Adding Straight Empire Rye to their Core Portfolio

August 13, 2025, BROOKLYN, NY: Kings County Distillery is excited to announce a new flagship offering, a Straight Empire Rye that will become a core part of its portfolio. While Kings County has released Empire Rye whiskeys in the past, they have been limited annual allocations. This release marks the first time the inventory is sufficient to create a steady supply. The new 90-proof whiskey bears a gold cap (an internal signifier for majority rye-grain distillate) as well as the Empire Rye insignia—a mark of provenance and quality launched by New York Distillers in 2017. 

“If bourbon belongs to Kentucky, then rye whiskey belongs to the Northeast and New York in particular,” said co-founder and distiller Colin Spoelman. “This is really the culmination of the Empire Rye project, begun a decade ago in Denver at the American Craft Spirits Association’s convention and it has taken ten full years to have sufficient inventory to create a mainstream rye release which we believe honors the tradition of rye whiskey in New York and stands out from a crowded field of peers.”

The new rye is made with 80% Danko rye grown in Ancramdale, New York and 20% English malted barley. It’s double pot distilled and aged in charred oak barrels for a minimum of three years. It is one of the few commercially available rye whiskeys made grain-to-glass in the Northeast, where rye first originated in this country. “Almost 70% of rye comes from a single distillery in Indiana, and is bottled under a number of different names,” continued Spoelman. “A handful of craft distillers have come together to reintroduce rye production in Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland, where rye originated and was long the dominant spirit until bourbon began to take over in the late 1800s. Rye almost died out in the 1990s but has seen an important renaissance due to craft distillers and the resurgence of historical cocktails.” 

With no corn in this mashbill, this high-rye recipe offers notes of honeycomb, orange zest, and cinnamon on the nose while toffee brittle, dried apricot, and barrel spice overtake the palate, and a lingering finish of maple, anisette, and marzipan.

Bottles will be line-priced with Kings County’s Straight Bourbon, Peated Bourbon, and American Single Malt, with the suggested retail price of $69. The first bottles will go on sale on August 13th at the distillery’s tasting room, the Gatehouses, and online at kingscountydistillery.com, rolling out to New York stores and distribution later this month.

ABOUT:

KINGS COUNTY DISTILLERY is New York City’s oldest, largest, and premier whiskey distillery. Founded in 2010, Kings County makes handmade bourbon, rye, and other whiskeys out of the 126-year-old Paymaster Building in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, using local ingredients and traditional distilling equipment to make whiskeys that have been praised by the New York Times, Wine & Spirits Magazine, and Whisky Advocate. Kings County specializes in pre-prohibition production processes that yield whiskeys that are both traditional and creative at the same time. Kings County is widely recognized as one of the preeminent craft distilleries in the United States, having been named Distillery of the Year in 2016 from the American Distilling Institute and in 2023 from Tales of the Cocktail and has recently hit #1 on Trip Advisor for things to do in NYC.