This Michigan Distillery Is Making Whiskey With Rye Recovered From an 1876 Shipwreck

Jonah Flicker
·3-min read

Distilleries have been making whiskey from heirloom varietals of grain for years, spending time and effort to literally revive lost flavors using long-forgotten barley, corn, and rye, a process that starts in the lab and ends in a still. But one distillery in Michigan went to even greater lengths to revive a grain, literally sending divers down to the bottom of Lake Huron to collect rye samples.

Mammoth Distilling was founded more than a decade ago in northern Michigan by husband and wife team Chad Munger and Tracy Hickman. The distillery makes gin and vodka, but the most interesting spirits produced there are different types of whiskey, specifically rye. The Northern Rye series blends in-house produced and sourced whiskey, aging and finishing it in different types of barrels. The distillery got really creative when it created Rosen Rye, growing that particular varietal on South Manitou Island (with a permit from the National park Service) and turning it into whiskey.

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When the Mammoth team learned that there was rye in the hold of an ship that sank to the bottom of Lake Huron in 1876, the J.S. Bentley, it seemed like this could be another opportunity to revive a forgotten grain and turn it into whiskey. “Recovering rye from the Bentley gives us access to a variety that pre-dates seed banks and any named variety of rye in the U.S.,” Munger told Robb Report. “With the help of Michigan State University, which is evaluating both the agronomic and flavor characteristics of over 200 varieties of modern rye, we intend to create a new variety of rye bred specifically for the distilling industry. It will be a grain bred not just to perform better in the field, but one which will provide maximum flavor in the bottle, a true convergence of science, history, agriculture and distilling.”

Mammoth was able to recover the rye from the ship because it is one of a very few privately owned wrecks, and therefore not protected. In September, divers descended about 160 feet to extract the seeds, and miraculously some were still intact after being submerged for nearly 150 years. “About half the seeds were completely dead, but the remaining still had plenty of available starch, the source of energy seeds use for germination,” said Munger. “The wet seeds would not germinate, but half have undergone drying and are being bathed in hormones to stimulate germination. In the event that nothing germinates, DNA from the seeds has already been collected and the genome sequenced. [Scientists at MSU] are identifying what modern relatives likely came from this line. We will splice DNA from this variety on a base of others (Rosen and other heritage varieties that have desirable traits) to create new hybrids which we can evaluate for agronomic and flavor character.”

If all goes according to plan, eventually this “Bentley rye” will be planted, harvested, distilled, and turned into a new type of rye whiskey, but it will be a few years before that project is realized. In the meantime, the distillery used some of the wood from the shipwreck for another expression. Shipwreck Volume 1: J. S. Bentley is a 24-year-old sourced Canadian whisky that was finished with toasted staves that were recovered from the wreck, and it will set you back more than $500 for a bottle (you can order one from the distillery’s website).

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