American Whiskey's Greatest Icon, Now in Nutcracker Form

In the pantheon of whiskies named following people—Johnnie Walker, Elijah Craig, Jack Daniel’s—there’s just one that is endured more time than any, and carries a verifiably genuine backstory to boot. Previous Overholt, America’s most storied and longest-working rye, bears the title and image of Abraham Overholt, an irascible Pennsylvanian who started a whiskey empire that’s lasted in excess of two hundreds of years.

Quite a few people today deemed Abe a challenging nut to crack throughout his life span, and now the tables have turned: He’s been immortalized in nutcracker variety.

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This holiday getaway time, Old Overholt has partnered with German nutcracker artisans Steinbach to develop a unique figurine of its founding patriarch. The wood Abe, with his oversized eyebrows and trademark scowl, is flanked by a sack of rye grain and a barrel. He sporting activities a gold pocket watch—no doubt holding monitor of how swiftly his workers are working—and carries a bottle of common Old Overholt. The hardness of Abe’s demeanor is matched only by the toughness of his jaws, which can crack a walnut shell with simplicity.

This presentation of the Overholt scion isn’t just for entertaining: It is rooted in the existence of the male and history of the brand. Abraham commenced generating whiskey at his family’s Western Pennsylvania farm distillery in the very first ten years of the 19th century. The moment referred to as an “unruly Mennonite,” he had a reputation for frugality—which is stating anything, looking at the hardscrabble requires of existence on the frontier at that time.

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Abraham had the identity traits for accomplishment, on the other hand: In his lifetime, he took the Overholt rye distillery from becoming little much more than a farm operation to one of the country’s greatest whiskey producers. At the time of his death in 1870, A. Overholt & Co. experienced two distilleries in Western Pennsylvania creating properly-regarded Monongahela rye. Less than 20 years afterwards, that whiskey had absolutely adopted Aged Overholt as its manufacturer and was currently being bottled with Abraham’s scowling confront on the label. The picture was primarily based on a authentic-everyday living portrait of Abraham and nevertheless graces each bottle of Previous Overholt now.

Even though Prohibition dealt a lethal blow to numerous whiskey makers, Aged Overholt survived. You could keep in mind it as a plot level in the third period of “Boardwalk Empire,” when then-distillery owner Andrew Mellon conspires with Nucky Thompson to preserve the facility up and operating illegally. That component is all fiction, but Mellon—real-daily life Secretary of the Treasury—did grant himself a license to offer medicinal whiskey from Previous Overholt’s shares, which retained the model alive right up until Repeal.

These times Aged Overholt is produced in Kentucky, not Pennsylvania, however its primary location however stands. Recently that site—now a museum and dwelling background expertise called West Overton—began building whiskey as soon as once again on a micro-scale, presenting readers a probability to see what it was like two centuries back, when Abraham himself worked the stills.

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The Outdated Overholt brand has been occupied much too, releasing new offerings like Bottled-in-Bond and 114 Proof, an amped up version of the basic rye that will be sure to followers of higher-evidence whiskey. A really confined Aged Overholt 11-12 months-old arrived out past year—the oldest rye the manufacturer has ever produced.

Any of these bottles would make a fantastic gift in tandem with this restricted-edition nutcracker. The to start with run of stiff-legged little Abes, priced at $399, marketed out in just an hour of launch, but a next, a lot more confined batch, which swaps Previous Overholt 114 for a little bottle of typical rye is set to drop on December 16 at steinbach-store.com if you’re seeking to score. The whiskey drinker who previously has a cupboard entire of rocks glasses and far more decanters than they could probably fill is guaranteed to go nuts around these kinds of a one of a kind piece of whiskey gear.

And even if they really don’t get one particular of these iron-jawed Abes, a good bottle of Previous Overholt must be just as welcome.