News and Press Releases - 2022

Men's Journal does a roundup of the best warming whiskeys for winter.  Nice to land squarely on this list once again, along with some excellent friends on the list.

Summer’s balmy embrace is long gone. Winter and the holidays are barreling toward us like an out-of-control locomotive. And while a crackling fire can replace the warmth of the sun on your skin, we prefer to warm up from the inside out. Because, truthfully, there’s no greater feeling than staving off a chill with the season’s greatest warming whiskeys.

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Released only (about) twice per year, the cask strength version of Catoctin Creek’s popular Roundstone Rye [Cask Proof] is a potent 58% ABV but still manages to be sublimely complex and well-balanced. This award-winner is known for its bold flavor profile of toffee, sweet milk chocolate, fresh leather, pipe tobacco, toasted vanilla beans, and peppery rye. It’s the sweet, spicy, warming whiskey you’ll crave all winter long.

You can read the full story, here.

Something exciting is happening in Pennsylvania.  A bold new start-up founded by Bluecoat Gin alumni, Andrew Auwerda, is offering spirits not available in the PLCB system:

BOTLD — a new pop-up store at 119 S. 18th St. as well as an e-commerce site offering free shipping in Pennsylvania — bottles and sells spirits that cannot be found in Fine Wine & Good Spirits’ inventory, even on the special-order list.

BOTLD bypasses the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board’s monopoly on wine and spirits sales, which tends to exclude smaller distillers that may not have the scale, distribution, and resources to get into its catalog.

Andrew calls out the particular problem for craft brands like us:

Let’s take Catoctin Creek, from Purcellville, Va. “You’d think they’d be available here,” Auwerda said.

“They have plenty of fans here, but they’re not. They’ve tried many times to get through the normal system and have been rejected. This is a way for them to fill out their map.” BOTLD sells three rye whiskeys from Catoctin Creek, priced from $45 to $90 a bottle. Auwerda said he follows manufacturers’ suggested retail pricing.

You can read the full story, here.

Yet another article in the vein of "So you think you don't like rye?" Uproxx surveys a bunch of industry people, and comes up with the list of ryes for beginners.

Andy Nelson, co-founder and head distiller at Nelson's Green Brier Distillery in Nashville gives us the shout out:

The best beginner rye is Catoctin Creek’s Roundstone Rye. It has some really beautiful Bourbon-like notes in the beginning, things like cherry and maple, but then flows into flavors more typically associated with Rye.
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I get great cinnamon and nutmeg followed by a sort of cooling mint note that is simultaneously familiar and unexpected. It’s an excellent go-to rye in my opinion.

You can read the full story, here. Thanks, Andy!! Cheers!

Jonah Flicker at Esquire does his own yearly roundup of rye whiskey in America. Having made Kara Newman's list at Wine Enthusiast, we are overjoyed to also be included in Esquire. Jonah leads off the article with this intro:

Once upon a time, rye whiskey was extremely popular in America, particularly before the buzzkill that was Prohibition. But in the years that followed the dry spell, rye got a reputation as an inferior spirit, if it was even considered at all. Those days are long gone, and over the last decade the rye has become the whiskey du jour with both craft and longstanding distilleries releasing their own versions of bourbon’s spicier sister.

Jonah goes on to write about us:

Another craft distillery with a strong focus on rye whiskey is Virginia’s Catoctin Creek (they’ve even trademarked the term “The Virginia Rye Whiskey”). Founders Scott and Becky Harris (she’s also the chief distiller) are committed to making high quality, small batch rye whiskey that doesn’t lack in flavor or complexity. Some of these are young and relatively low ABV, like the 80 proof flagship Roundstone Rye, a nice sipping whiskey or Manhattan building block. All are made from a 100 percent rye mash bill, like the bottled-in-bond Rabble Rouser Rye, a 100 proof, four-year-old whiskey that explodes with spice and fruit.

You can read the full story, here.