Old Commonwealth Red Top Rye 7 Year Old Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey (2026) 75cl

Old Commonwealth Red Top Rye 7 Year Old Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey (2026) 75cl

Red Top Rye has one of the great American whiskey origin stories. In the late 1800s, a German immigrant named Ferdinand Westheimer set up shop in Missouri and quickly built one of the largest whiskey operations in the country. His flagship brand was Red Top Rye, and Westheimer was every bit as relentless a marketer as he was a businessman.

He got Red Top onto Pullman train cars, handed out samples at the 1904 World's Fair, and plastered ads with slogans like “Going, Going, Gone” and “The whiskey that leaves no regret” across every surface he could find. This man had eleven children. He had to move bottles.

And move them he did. Red Top was massive by 1900. Westheimer kept buying distilleries to keep up with demand and died a millionaire. When he passed, just before Prohibition, his children declined to keep the brand alive. Red Top Rye disappeared.

It surfaced once more in the 1990s, when Julian Van Winkle III owned Commonwealth Distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, and pulled Red Top out of the trademark graveyard. He relaunched it as a 15-year single barrel rye, a one-time, much-celebrated run. Then gone again.

One throughline across every era: the rye was exceptional. Which is exactly why Old Commonwealth is bringing it back.

TASTING NOTES

About Old Commonwealth Distillery

52.5% ABV

75cl