Distillery Turns Grains Recovered From Shipwreck Into Whiskey

Distillers often incorporate unconventional items when creating new varieties of liquor. And one group of enthusiasts in Michigan is using a 150-year-old secret ingredient in their latest batch of whiskey. 

Mammoth Distilling in northern Michigan offers, among other spirits, a variety of whiskey products largely made from rye. They source their ingredients from a range of locations, including a special varietal found on South Manitou Island that they procured with a permit from the National Park Service. But perhaps the most interesting discovery they made was of a rye dating back to 1876 found in the wreckage of the J.S. Bentley at the bottom of Lake Huron. 

Now, they're turning that nearly 150-year-old rye into whiskey. 

"Recovering rye from the Bentley gives us access to a variety that pre-dates seed banks and any named variety of rye in the U.S.," Mammoth co-founder Chad Munger told Robb Report of the once-in-a-lifetime find. "With the help of Michigan State University, which is evaluating both the agronomic and flavor characteristics of over 200 varieties of modern rye, we intend to create a new variety of rye bred specifically for the distilling industry."

"It will be a grain bred not just to perform better in the field, but one which will provide maximum flavor in the bottle, a true convergence of science, history, agriculture, and distilling," Munger noted.

Related: The Best Rye Whiskey in America: 5 Bottles to Try

Naturally, trying to make alcohol out of such an old grain has proven to be a challenge. But thanks to advanced technology and extraction techniques, the Mammoth team is able to create something unlike anything anyone has ever tasted. 

"About half the seeds were completely dead, but the remaining still had plenty of available starch, the source of energy seeds use for germination," Munger continued. "The wet seeds would not germinate, but half have undergone drying and are being bathed in hormones to stimulate germination." 

"In the event that nothing germinates, DNA from the seeds has already been collected and the genome sequenced," he explained. "[Scientists at MSU] are identifying what modern relatives likely came from this line. We will splice DNA from this variety on a base of others to create new hybrids which we can evaluate for agronomic and flavor character."

It wouldn't be the first alcoholic beverage to come from the ocean in recent times. Last year, a California winery came under fire after authorities discovered it had illegally fermented bottles of wine at the bottom of the Santa Barbara Channel. At the very least, Mammoth's shipwreck whiskey is being created on land.