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Given the apparent nostalgia for Southern Comfort, I thought I'd ask about this "whiskey", which was my first introduction to booze. A long time ago and a continent away. If I recall correctly, it's "rye whiskey" (maybe) with fruit in the bottle. I can't imagine that I could drink it today without gagging.

I always understood "Rock-n-Rye" to be rye whiskey with rock candy in it. Rock candy was a piece of string with little sugar crystal "rocks" formed on it. It--the candy, that is--was something you could make at home, although I forget how. I suspect "Rock-n-Rye" was actually a liqueur and the candy was a gimmick more than the primary sweetener, but I could be wrong. Maybe it was just rye whiskey sweetened with rock candy. I wonder if it's still sold anywhere?

It's still sold in VA - I saw it in the ABC store on Saturday. I've never had it though.

Just returned from a golf outing with about thirty participants. One is from Boston and had a bottle of Rock and Rye he'd been keeping for over ten years. It was a rye whiskey with a couple of pieces of orange (with peel) floating in the bottom. Tasted sweet...somewhat like a mixture of Drambuie, rye whiskey and cheap orange liquor. Not well liked by my group.....but he was proud of it.

Randy

When I was at United Distillers we bottled the Old Mr. Boston Rock and Rye and it was a decent selling product. The archive also had several older bottles of the product - some with fruit and some with a hunk of crystalized sugar. I never tasted it but was told that it was a sweet drink.
Mike Veach

Not sure about the Rock and Rye myself, but I remember the rock candy from my childhood that came in a box and was like sugar crystal gravel with an off taste I just can't remember. We used to pretend they were precious diamonds. Haven't seen any in years though.

It can still be found in MNaryland . It was a big seller in the 50's and 60's.

The rye whiskey had a hunk of rock candy ( crystalized sugar ) in the bottle. Like an old fashioned.

I just saw a supply of Rock & Rye on a store shelf today here in Middle Tennessee. I'm afraid I didn't pay to much attention to it, other than notice it was lined a fair way back on the shelf, double-faced -- which would seem to indicate it is current, not old, stock, which would likely not be that plentiful.

I am interested in rock and rye. There is some still sold but it is getting harder to find. There is a good brand available under the Leroux name and one or two others in the market as well. Randy described the palate well. I always combine it with real straight whiskey 50/50 if not 3:1 whiskey to the R&R. It makes a neat rye counterpart to the Old-Fashioned-type drink some people make with Southern Comfort and Bourbon that I mentioned in another thread. Only once, in a bar in Philadelphia, did I see the kind of rock and rye that had preserved fruit in it, the ones I have seen generally are clear and "liquidized" as it were. Anyway it is an old Northeast drink and you can still find it but not always easily. I think its roots are as some kind of 1800's nostrum, when alcohol was still viewed as medicinal.

Gary

I remember seeing Rock'n'Rye often, but I rarely look at the offerings in that part of the liquor store . I promise to research more thoroughly on my next sojourn to Party Source.

Ways to make whiskey more palatable to people who don't care for the taste of straight whiskey seem to go to either extreme. Adding bitters or wormwood (vermouth) is one direction; the other is adding sweetners (honey, fruit juice). Some additives (orange, for example) use both ideas. Hence, Southern Comfort (yes, I know there's no whiskey in SC; but most drinkers of it don't). Rock'n'Rye is one of the sweet ones.

Many of us learned to make rock candy when we were kids. You made up a sugar syrup in a jar, then suspended a string with a weight on it into the syrup through a hole in the lid. As you watched (over a period of days; not continuously, of course) sugar magically crystallized on the string, getting larger and larger. It was a great treat, and was also something that kids have been doing since at least colonial days.

The distinguishing feature of the R'n'R I remember is that the rock candy was grown in the bottle before filling, so that it was larger than the neck of the bottle. This lent a sort of "ship in a bottle" curiosity to the whole thing. There is a type of pear brandy made in France where they actually place the empty bottles on the pear buds in the spring and allow the fruit to grow inside the bottle. It does nothing for the flavor, but the "how-did-they-get-that-in-there" effect sells a lot of brandy.

I guess, for those who understood these things, the rock candy was also a good indicator of proof. Since the sugar crystals don't dissolve in alcohol their presence would indicate the contents weren't too watered down.

There's a really nostalgic little bar around the corner from my store called Sonny's. Was in there for a winter solstice fish fry that's a big n'hood event last year and saw a bottle of rock n rye on the back of the bar. Ordered a shot on the rocks and the bartender had no idea what I was talking about.

I was just this week thinking of buying a bottle of each Rock n Rye available in NY. I found quite a few in distribution. Anyone interested in stopping by the store for a Rock n Rye tasteoff?

Got my rock and rye weekend tasting planned for Saturday, July 9th and Sunday, July 10th. Bottles found include: Leroux, Hiram Walker, Mr. Boston, and Jacquin. Only the Jacquin has fruit floating in it. None of them have rock candy in the bottle. These were the only four available in NY. If you see a brand with rock candy, lemme know.

An excellent idea. As John said, rock and rye is one of the traditional ways to modify the taste of straight whiskey but still get across a whiskey taste. Some of the rock and rye's you found probably use real rye (or some), some probably use neutral spirits a la Southern Comfort. I would try different combinations with straight rye and bourbon, and of course a little taken neat of each kind. Of course, the sugar is there (in all of them), it is simply blended in in a syrup form. I wonder if the old true rock candy types may have been less sweet than today's since only some of th sugar would have entered the spirit, but either way it was probably, and remains, a sweet drink. In the summer no doubt it was used with ice and in the winter probably it was taken straight. You can make quite a complex cocktail by mixing r&r with straight whiskey but one can also envision mixing it with vodka, blended or Canadian whisky, etc. I wonder who the market is for this product. Whenever I see it (which is rare) the bottles look as if unsold for ages, yet someone is buying it. Possibly it is older people, or certain ethnicities, or younger people who also like peppermint schnapps and that type of cordial. A very interesting old, purely American drink and glad to see it is still in the market. The Jacquin's sounds like the one I saw in Philadelphia, containing pieces of preserved fruit. Lenell I am in New York this Friday and Saturday (not next) and will try to stop by, I can view these bottles and pick up a couple of things. Not sure when exactly I'll be able to come over but I'll do my best to get there.

Gary

Rock and Rye is fully defined in Title 27 of CFR. This is a convenient link:

http://www.distill.com/specs/USA10.html

and scroll down to Rock and Rye, Rock and Bourbon, Rock and Brandy and Rock and Rum. Chuck has provided the same CFR info before. Typing "Rock and Rye" into Google turns up some R&R recipes that might be worth a look.

Yes, thanks, and I do recall having seen this before (courtesy as you said the (lately somewhat elusive) Chuck Cowdery).

I wonder if the definitions of rock and bourbon, rock and brandy and rock and rum are the product of a government lawyer's wish to encompass logically all the plausible combinations of sugar and commonly used spirit or reflect actual, historical drinks. In some 30 years of studying American spirits and label and bottle collections I have never seen a "rock and bourbon" or a "rock and rum", for example. I suspect rock and brandy at least is the product purely of the legal imagination altough maybe such drinks did have a market a long time ago.. The sibilance of the term rock and rum and modern connotations of the word rock suggest though that some smart marketing type should put his mind to creating a rockin' rock and rum, and who knows, it might be the next Bailey's. Don't they say, everything old is new again?

Gary