Today, award-winning BLACKENED Whiskey announces the release of the 2024 edition of Rye the Lightning, inspired by Metallica’s 6x platinum sophomore album, Ride the Lightning. This limited-edition expression follows the highly acclaimed 2022 edition of Rye The Lightning, which received Gold from the John Barleycorn Awards, Best Finished Whiskey from Breaking Bourbon, a 93 rating from Whisky Advocate, and was awarded the #14 spot on Whisky Advocate’s 2022 Top 20 Most Exciting Whiskies of the World. Given the overwhelmingly positive response, BLACKENED Master Distiller & Blender Rob Dietrich sought to bottle lightning again with this latest iteration.
The 2024 edition of Rye The Lightning is crafted from a blend of straight rye whiskeys hand-selected by Dietrich. The whiskeys are vatted and transferred for finishing to Madeira wine and Caribbean rum casks for 2-14 weeks each, where they undergo BLACKENED’s proprietary BLACK NOISE™ sonic-enhancement process. Rye The Lightning is non-chill filtered and bottled at 92 proof. The result is notes of green apple, barn hay, caramel, and banana bread on the nose with pear, honeysuckle, muscovado, almond, cinnamon, sawn-wood, and waffle cone on the palate.
“When we launched the first edition of Rye The Lightning in 2022, I knew we had something special,” said Master Distiller & Blender Rob Dietrich. “I absolutely love the hay spice and dark earthy notes in American rye whiskey, so it was an adventure to play around with a creative flavor profile through cask finishing. I was thrilled that consumers loved this whiskey as much as we did, and with this limited release, I tried to capture some of the innovative magic of the first expression, but with a slightly new spin by upping the proof a couple of notches, while applying non-chill filtering and using a rye with a different mash bill with different types of Madeira and Rum finishes.”
The makers of BLACKENED Whiskey sonically enhance their whiskeys to extract more flavor from the casks, using a proprietary scientific process co-developed by the sound engineers at Meyer Sound, a global leader in sound technology. Dubbed Black Noise™, this sonic-enhancement process produces low hertz sound waves causing the whiskey to reverberate at a fast rate, interacting with the oak staves of the barrel, measurably releasing wood compounds and flavors.
“They say that lightning never strikes twice, but the second release of Rye The Lightning proves otherwise,” said Metallica’s lead guitarist, Kirk Hammett. “Rob captured the spirit of our ‘Ride The Lightning’ album with the award-winning first batch. And now with the 2024 edition, we are excited to take our fans on that ‘Ride’ once again.”
Rye The Lightning is available now with an SRP of $69.99. To order online, find local retailers, or for more information, visit BLACKENED Whiskey’s website www.BlackenedWhiskey.com
