Rittenhouse Rye

Rittenhouse is a whiskey brand rather than a distillery, and the distinction matters here. The name belongs, as of July 2026, to Heaven Hill Distilleries, Inc., the family-owned Kentucky company that also makes the liquid in the glass. The rye in current Bottled-in-Bond releases was distilled at Heaven Hill's Bernheim Distillery in Louisville, registered as DSP-KY-1, then matured and bottled through the company's Bardstown operations under DSP-KY-31. Brand, distiller, and owner all sit inside one organization, which is less common in American rye than the shelf presence of this label suggests.

History & Heritage

The brand began in 1934 in Philadelphia, introduced by The Continental Distilling Corporation, a company founded by Harry Publicker. It launched as Rittenhouse Square Straight Rye Whisky, named for the Philadelphia square, and carried that name until 1948, when "Square" was dropped and the whiskey was reintroduced as a four-year-old Bottled-in-Bond expression. That 1948 decision set the specification the brand still runs on today.

Ownership then moved through the consolidation that reshaped American whiskey. Publicker's Philadelphia facilities shut down during the 1980s, and Rittenhouse passed to the Medley Distilling Company in Owensboro, Kentucky. Glenmore Distilling Company bought Medley in 1988. In 1991 Guinness's United Distillers acquired Glenmore and folded it together with Schenley operations under United Distillers Glenmore. Heaven Hill acquired the Rittenhouse Straight Rye Whisky brand in 1993, shifting production from Pennsylvania to Kentucky and keeping a rye alive through the years when almost nobody was asking for one.

The Whiskey

The mash bill is 51% rye, 35% corn, and 14% malted barley, a barely-legal rye by percentage that leans on Kentucky roundness rather than the aggressive spice of higher-rye recipes. Aging runs a minimum of four years in new charred American oak. Because it is Bottled-in-Bond, it must be the product of a single distillation season from one distiller at one distillery, aged in a federally bonded warehouse under government supervision, and bottled at exactly 100 proof.

Heaven Hill has periodically pushed the brand far past that floor. The Rittenhouse Very Rare Single Barrel Rye expressions released between 2006 and 2009 ran 21, 23, and 25 years old. In May 2026 Heaven Hill released the Rittenhouse United States 250th Anniversary Commemorative Edition, a 10-year-old Bottled-in-Bond rye drawn from 90 selected barrels, bottled non-chill filtered at 100 proof, at a suggested price of $99.99.

Why It Matters

Rittenhouse is the working bartender's rye. It was named North American Whiskey of the Year and took Double Gold at the 2006 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, and the Very Rare 23-Year-Old Single Barrel won Best Rye Whiskey and Double Gold there in 2008. More recently it was voted Best Rye Whiskey at the 2019 WSWA Spirits Tasting Competition, took Double Gold at San Francisco in 2022 and again in 2024, earned a Gold medal at the 2024 Bartender Spirits Awards, Double Gold at the 2024 TAG Global Spirits Awards, Double Gold and Consumer's Choice at the 2024 SIP Awards, Silver at the World Whiskies Awards in both 2023 and 2025, and a place among the world's top ten best selling American whiskeys in the 2025 Drinks International Annual Brands Report. At 100 proof it holds its shape in a Manhattan or a Sazerac in a way few ryes at this price manage, which is precisely why it lives behind so many back bars.

Visiting the Distillery

Rittenhouse has no visitor site of its own. The producing company welcomes guests at the Heaven Hill Bourbon Experience in Bardstown, Kentucky. Heaven Hill also added a second production site there, Heaven Hill Springs Distillery, which filled its first barrel in April 2025 and opened to tours later that year. Both Bernheim and Springs can run rye mash bills, though whiskey from Springs is not yet old enough to appear in a four-year Bottled-in-Bond Rittenhouse as of July 2026.