iowa
Templeton Rye
July 8, 2009 - 7:41am — matt (not verified)
When we were in Iowa we heard stories of Templeton Rye, a whiskey made in illegal stills during Prohibition that was supposedly one of Al Capone's favorites. It was kept in 1-gallon metal cans and smuggled 400+ miles due east to Chicago. The bootleggers sometimes buried the cans at drop points along the way, and my grandfather, as a little boy, would dig up the cans and sell them for 50¢
We visited the distillery, but on July 3rd and 4th pretty much everything in the state was closed. We looked around for where we might buy some, but it seemed to be sold out everywhere.
So we were happy when we were visiting Chicago and discovered that Lush West Lakeview Liquors, a local liquor store (with a very good selection of beer, even some of the more obscure Dogfish Head ones) had several bottles. We got two.
My Uncle Tom said that back in the day the stills were actually in Dedham, Iowa - one town over. The moonshiners called it Templeton Rye to confuse the federals.
