The Curious History of Balboa Rye
Is it time to redefine heirloom grains in whiskey?
Last January New Riff Distilling re-released its Balboa Rye, bottled at 100 proof and made with a mash bill of 95 percent Balboa rye and five percent malted rye. The new release from the northern Kentucky distillery was a reprise of their 2019 specialty whiskey release — the first whiskey riff from New Riff — which complemented their flagship bourbon and rye.
The whiskey, which was the first and is still the only whiskey made from Balboa rye, is undeniably delicious. It’s rich and a touch spicy (like most ryes), with notes of damp earth and black pepper and a passing hint of toasted oatmeal. At heart, it tastes like agriculture, a quality that was once common but now mostly obsolete in the spirits world.
Tasting like agriculture was also the point. New Riff’s co-founder and vice president Jay Erisman looks for tastes that he can coax out of forgotten grains. “What we find with heirlooms is that they have a flavor, and often a superior flavor,” he says. “And heirloom ryes are really, really rare. Nobody uses it because nobody grows it.” New Riff’s label notes that it’s “made with rare heirloom Balboa Rye, exclusively grown for New Riff Distilling.”
That’s a lot of “heirloom.” Which leads one to wonder: what exactly is an heirloom grain and why would it taste better?
No official definition for heirloom grain exists (it’s sometimes called “heritage grain” or “pedigreed grain.”) In this, it’s like “small batch” in liquor production — a term of the marketing arts rather than something precise. If there’s a consensus, it’s that an heirloom grain is one that was around before the scientists took hold and began breeding with the goal of increasing yields. They also tended to be grains that were common in one area or another because those areas were well suited for them. “What they all have in common is that they were regional — they had adapted to regional proclivities,” Erisman says. “And one of those proclivities seemed to be taste.”
Heirloom grains have drawn attention for the past couple of decades precisely for that reason — they can provide more taste. Since the early years of the last century, agricultural experts have been almost single-mindedly focused on yield — on producing more nutrients per acre of land. The noble goal was to feed a rapidly growing world; taste was secondary, and it became collateral damage in the headlong rush to boost calories per acre. Wonder Bread was the result.
In recent years a select subgroup of agronomists, chefs, bakers, brewers, and distillers have become interested in what was lost — the taste of forgotten beers, breads, and distilled products. Among the “rediscovered” grains were Jimmy Red corn, which grew on James Island off South Carolina (hence “Jimmy”), and Abruzzi rye, which was brought to the United States from Italy in 1900, apparently by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of Seed and Plant Introduction (founded 1898). Both are now used to make exquisite whiskey.
So what’s the story with Balboa rye? Thanks for asking. Like the Abruzzi rye, this variation also involves Italy. Almost incidentally, it also involves a notable Fascist.
Balboa rye first came to the United States around 1919, as the research heyday on high-yield grains was ramping up. It was sent from eastern Italy to the university agriculture station in Tennessee, where agronomists bred it, in the words of one 1933 account, into “a high-yielding variety adaptable to Tennessee soil and climate.” It reportedly produced yields 40 percent higher than native rye. It “has met the approval of all farmers who have tried it,” reported the Kentucky New-Democrat and Leader.
What it lacked, however, was a name. This Italian rye remained nameless for years, until a dashing Italian aviator named Italo Balbo flew across the Atlantic with a squadron of planes, the fleet landing with great acclaim at the Century of Progress International Exposition in Chicago in 1933. This was just six years after Lindbergh’s pioneering flight, and America was still agog at the fearless exploits of early aviators. Balbo was even featured on the cover of Time magazine
.And so someone — exactly who remains unknown — came up with the idea of naming the grain after the swashbuckling Italian aviator. “It’s Balbo Rye, Puzzled Brains at U.T. Decide,” was the headline in a Knoxville paper, noting “a name was badly wanted just at the time the Italian fliers arrived.” (Chicago also named Balbo Avenue, which runs into Grant Park, in his honor.)
Sometime between 1940 and 1950, the Balbo grain added an “a” to the end of its name. So the rye now quietly pivoted from honoring an Italian aviator to a Spanish conquistador, a man famed for being the first European to gaze upon the Pacific Ocean, in Panama, in 1513.
Why the change? I’ve not been able to find a definitive account of this, but I’ll note that after Balbo’s triumphant Atlantic crossing, he went on to become famous for other reasons. He emerged as one of Italy’s most notorious Fascist politicians, a leader of the Blackshirts, and a founder of Italy’s air force. He left a trail of stories, such as when he was involved in a raid on an anti-Fascist newspaper, the output of which fueled a “huge bonfire [which] burned all day in the public square outside the newspaper offices, surrounded by a ring of enthusiastic onlookers.” “Think of it,” Balbo said during the conflagration, “a few days ago the police had planned to arrest me, while now I will enter Rome with my blackshirts.” For a time, he was regarded as the second most powerful Italian after Benito Mussolini.
Anyway, it seems that around the time of World War II a person as anonymous as the original namer of Balbo rye decided that changing the name to Balboa would be prudent. Nobody wanted a Fascist rye. So by 1950 at least, that was the name.
But I digress.
Erisman said New Riff started using Balboa rye more or less by happenstance. About 30 years ago a farmer by the name of Charles Fogg bought some rye seed for a winter cover crop from an Amish seedsman in Indiana. It turned out to be Balboa, which by then had been largely displaced by even higher-yielding ryes. It grew well and Fogg continued to use it. Starting in 2014 he began delivering yellow dent corn to New Riff for its bourbon. “As we were dumping grain, he said, Jay, did you know we grow rye as well?” Erisman recalls.
Erisman did not, but he soon ran some test batches and was impressed with what resulted. “The difference was apparent off the still, and once we started aging we could see how dramatically different it was,” Erisman says. After a limited release of Balboa rye in 2019, they stepped up production and aging, and launched their re-release last January, one of a series of heirloom grain whiskeys (including an as-yet-unreleased American single malt made from heirloom barley).
But is Balboa rye an heirloom grain? If you accept the definition as a grain that’s been unmodified since its historical cultivation, then no. It went through more than a decade of yield-boosting experimentation in Tennessee before it spread to farms across the U.S. Still, it produces a flavor that’s distinctive, and doesn’t taste like rye whiskey made from the most common rye (which is called, unoriginally, “common rye.”) It’s a flavor that might not have resurfaced if New Riff hadn’t chatted with their farmer during a delivery.
Perhaps it’s time to create another category — in addition to ancient grains (unmodified grains cultivated for millennia where they first arose) and heirloom grains (more modern but unmodified). I’d propose ”antique grains” — grains that were once common but now rare, and that distinguish themselves with flavors unlike those of more modern variants.
I shall give this further consideration over a dram of Balboa rye. I ask you to do the same.
New York Distilling has a (delicious) rye called Jaywalk Heirloom Rye that features Horton Rye, which they state is “an heirloom rye varietal not commercially grown since the 1800s”.