We at Templeton Rye would like to congratulate B.J. Hoffman for winning the 2010 Iowa Farm Bureau Cookout Contest with his The Good Stuff Barbeque Chicken Thighs recipe. B.J. used Templeton Rye as a part of his winning recipe and as the theme for his presentation, including a custom Templeton Rye table that he build himself using 144 of our story coasters. We have to say B.J., we knew you would win. You can’t go wrong with The Good Stuff!

For the second year in a row, Templeton Rye has a booth at the Iowa State Fair. The most common questions we get at the booth are “Are you giving samples?” and “Where can we find Templeton Rye?”

The answer to the first question is: No, we are not giving samples. (That’s against the Iowa State Fair rules.)

The answer to the second question is: We don’t really know. Yes, it is hard to find right now, but what we can tell you is when you’ll be able to find more. We have a counter at our booth in the Varied Industries Building counting down to the release of Templeton Rye Batch 4. Today it reads: “3 months, 17 days.”

At that point we will be feverishly bottling and getting it into a store near you. If you stop by our booth at the fair you’ll also find some of our most popular Templeton Rye merchandise, including flasks, shot glasses and t-shirts. So please stop by, ask us questions, tell us stories and pick up some cool items. We recommend wearing your newly-acquired Templeton Rye gear at the fair, and see how many people give you a nod, a smile or even a wave like you’re a member of a club. A club of people who are “in the know”.

Dear friends,

It is with a heavy heart that I reach out to tell you that we have lost Templeton Rye Master Distiller Meryl Kerkhoff. Meryl died at Manning Hospital, surrounded by his family. I really struggle to put into words how much we all admired this great man. He will be missed dearly.

Meryl was a child of the Depression, born a mile from our current distillery in Templeton in 1929 to Alphonse and Frances (Bluml) Kerkhoff. He attended Sacred Heart School in Templeton and graduated in 1946. Meryl fought in Korea for two years and went on to a successful career as a farmer and auctioneer. He and his wife Imelda had seven children and 14 grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are being handled by Ohde Funeral Home in Manning, Iowa.

Meryl had a presence that was unmistakable. He was a true gentleman and a man of great stature, both in size and in character. I will always remember how his huge hands, strengthened by a lifetime of farming, would totally engulf those of anyone who would shake them. He dressed well, yet modestly, and had his signature Templeton Rye cap slightly tilted, or “a little cocky” as he would say.

Meryl had a sense of humor and his own language that greatly amused the rest of our team. A nice place was “Uptown” and when things were going well we were “Cadillacing.” He was a caring man who was always excited to see you and would ask, “So, how’ve things been going?” Meryl was a patient man and was more likely to listen than to talk. He gave Keith and I great advice over the years and was always very thorough about issues that impacted our company.

Obviously things will continue at Templeton Rye and Keith has been handling the day-to-day duties for sometime. Genetics are a powerful thing I guess, as I look at what I have written about Meryl, I could very well be describing Keith.

Please keep Meryl, Imelda, Keith and all of the Kerkhoff family in your thoughts and prayers.

At Meryl’s request, we got together a couple of weeks ago to record Meryl, Keith and I reminiscing about some of our experiences with the company. We video taped a portion of the discussion which can be seen below.

Scott Bush, President, Templeton Rye

ABOVE: A pair of legends. Templeton Rye Master Distillery Meryl Kerkhoff with Wild Turkey Master Distiller Jimmy Russell.

Greetings from Templeton!

As many of you know, a law was passed earlier this year allowing us to be able to sell Templeton Rye at the distillery effective July 1, 2010. Due to our current allocation situation, we will not be selling any product at the distillery until mid-December, allowing retailers to get all of the product. We thank you for your continued patience and support!

Cheers,
Kevin
Templeton Rye Distillery Manager

On Saturday, June 19 we joined our friends from Ton Up Club Chicago and Delilah’s, the best whiskey bar in the world, in celebrating Mods vs. Rockers vintage motorcycle show on Lincoln Ave. The street was lined with Triumphs, Moto Guzzis, BMWs, Vespas and some custom-made choppers. Whatever your style, there was an epic display of bikes on hand.

Our friend Scott Takes of Underground Art Studios in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, thought this would be the perfect place to unveil the new Templeton Rye themed chopper. Scott was commissioned to paint a 124 Cu. Inch custom chopper built by Tim Carlson of Carlson Customs and Repair in Atkins, Iowa. Scott chose an all Templeton Rye custom paint job. The detail work on this bike is incredible. From the perfect bottle shot on the tank, to the TR on the seat, to the likeness of Templeton Rye’s most famous customer on the back fender. You can even kill the lights on the hidden license plate to make it disappear in case the Feds are chasing you while your running your stash. Check out the photos below, and be sure to get your tickets to the third annual Rock & Rye Celebration on July 31, so you can check out this awesome bike first hand.

Last year we planted and harvested our first crop of rye on the distillery property in Templeton. We used a portion of our home-grown rye to make our last batch and are working to increase the quality and size of our crop. This year’s crop is about three feet tall right now and is a beautiful blue/green. We will analyze it after harvest and hopefully use some in upcoming batches.

Be sure to stop by and say hello to the Templeton Rye team at the Des Moines Farmers Market throughout the summer! We will be there May 8 and 29, June 5 and 26, July 3 and 31, August 7 and 28, September 18 and October 9 and 16. Click below for some video highlights from 2009.

We’re excited to be a part of this very unique and impressive event started by Iowa native Brady Lowe, Founder of Taste Network again this year. Please check out COCHON 555 on April 24th at Hotel Fort Des Moines in Des Moines, Iowa. Templeton Rye Founder and President Scott Bush will be returning as a judge for the event.

WHAT: COCHON 555 is a competition featuring 5 chefs, 5 pigs and 5 winemakers. The event serves as a link to preserving heritage breed pigs by promoting breed diversity in the national community. A portion of the proceeds will benefit The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Iowa.

A group of chefs will each prepare a 140-pound heritage breed hog from head-to-toe for this friendly competition. Guests and professional judges will determine a winner based on presentation, utilization and overall best flavor. The winner will be crowned the “Prince or Princess of Porc.” In addition, five selected winemakers will showcase their wines.

Each 140-pound pig can be pre-cooked, braised, grilled, pressed, pickled, rubbed, smoked, seared, sauced, spiced, injected, marinated, cured in any way, or otherwise prepared. Guests of the event will experience the chef creations during a 2.5-hour stand-up reception. For this event, COCHON555 will be inviting five of chefs from the Midwest.

CHEFS:
Matt Steigerwald – Lincoln Cafe, Mount Vernon
George Formaro – Centro, Django, Des Moines
Hogan– Lidia’s KC, Kansas City
Howard Hanna – River Club, Kansas City
Hal Jasa – homage, Des Moines

Butcher: Ryan Farr - 4505 Meats San Francisco

WINES:
Chase Family Cellars, Napa
Hill Family Estate, Napa
Elk Cove Vineyards, Willamette
Madrigal Vineyards, Napa
Jasper Winery, Iowa

VIP EXPERIENCE: Starts early with a reserve wine tasting with Elk Cove Vineyards, artisan cheese reception with Gateway Market, cured meats from La Quercia, craft brews, Templeton Rye and best of all, guests can meat and greet with the chefs, winemakers and judges of COCHON555. (This portion is $150)

MAIN FLOOR: Guests will witness a whole pig butcher demonstration while consuming over 750lbs of swine, great wines, brews and pig perfect desserts. There will be an after party at a location to be determined. This is a full day of new and old relationships, great chefs, swine, wine and we look forward to sharing it with you. (This portion is $100)

WHERE: Hotel Fort Des Moines, 1000 Walnut Street, Des Moines, Iowa 50309
VIP – 3:30 pm
GA – 5:00 pm

For more information or to buy tickets, please visit www.cochon555.com.

Dear friends,

Greetings from Templeton. We are a ways into a long winter here in Iowa, but spring is in sight and it is officially 2010, the year when our expanded inventory starts to come on-line.

As many of you know, our product is aged in oak barrels for more than four years so we are only able to sell today what we distilled in 2006. We refused to rush our product or sacrifice quality, which has led to a long game of hurry-up-and-wait.

We started to expand production at the end of 2006 and that product begins to come on-line late this year. The bad news is that inventory will continue to be very lean until then. The good news is that we hope and expect to have a much larger and more stable inventory in place for Iowa and Illinois in time for Christmas and after the first of next year.

Until then, we will continue to ask for your patience. We currently sell about 70% of our product in Iowa and will continue to send product to the State Liquor Warehouse each month. You can see our actual Iowa case allocation for 2010 and early 2011 below. And, yes, we’ll be giving thanks in November that December and beyond looks much better.

Thank you all for your continued support. We are just getting started and are very excited about the future of Templeton Rye.

All the best,
Scott Bush
President, Templeton Rye

Hello, Templeton Rye fans,

Kevin Boersma, Distillery Manager, here with a little winter storm news. Not only has this been a long, snowy winter, but we were recently pummeled with a crippling ice storm. This storm left thousands without power for several days including the distillery, which was out of power for nearly four days. We received close to an inch of ice in the area, which led to downed power lines, poles and many, many trees. Crews from Missouri, Kansas, Illinois and Nebraska were in the area trying to restore power so everyone could try and get back to normal. Clean-up of trees is still going on and will continue into the spring. I thought I would share a few photos with you from around the distillery. Here’s to warmer weather!

Cheers,
Kevin

A view of the distillery from behind the snow piles.

Snowfall totals in Iowa have exceeded 3.5 feet this winter (that’s twice as much as the average snowfall per year)

Power lines outside of the distillery were coated with an inch of ice.

Tree branches covered in ice after the freezing rain ice storm.

Many of you have been asking about our increased allocation during the holidays so I wanted to take a minute to explain this to you. As you may know, our product spends at least four years aging in the barrel. We can’t go back in time and make more so we “have what we have” until some of our scaled-up production becomes available late next year. We’ve chosen to allocate the product we have until then, and we send product to Iowa and Illinois at the beginning of every month. In Iowa, we have basically sent 400 cases per month to the State from Jan-Sep of 2009. We backloaded our allocation around the holidays and sent 1,200 cases to the State for October last week, and we’re following that up with another 1,200 cases in November and 600 cases in December. The good news is that it should be a little bit easier to find a bottle of The Good Stuff for the next few months. We will return to a lower allocation in January but are quickly approaching November of 2010, the date when our scaled-up production starts to come on line. We sincerely appreciate your patience as we move toward that milestone date.

Cheers,
Scott Bush
President, Templeton Rye

We recently hosted some of our friends from Wirtz Beverage in Templeton. They were treated to a uniquely Iowa experience complete with golf carts, apple pie and bowling. You can see some highlights of the visit here:

We are proud to report that we have successfully grown and harvested our first crop of rye in Templeton. While this was a small crop grown for testing purposes and will likely not go into our whiskey, we are one step closer to our goal of growing a portion of raw materials locally and bringing back a traditional Iowa crop

Want to see more videos? Please visit our YouTube channel.

Back in April, our blogger friends Marshall Fawley and SeanMike Whipkey announced a contest on Scofflaw’s Den that challenged their readers to create and submit spring-inspired rye whiskey cocktail recipes. Each submission was graded on a ten point scale for the following categories:

-Does the cocktail have a spring theme?
-Is it a rye whiskey base?
-Taste
-Color/Presentation
-Uniqueness

A big congratulations to to the winners, Craig, Jeff, and Gabe. See all three winning cocktail recipes here. We’d like to thank Marshall and SeanMike for creating the contest in our honor and for sharing The Good Stuff with their first place winner, Craig “Dr. Bamboo” Mrusek, who received a bottle of “Marshall’s Mountain Moonshine Bitters” and a bottle of Templeton Rye. Here’s his winning cocktail recipe.

Jetpack by Craig “Dr. Bamboo” Mrusek

1 oz Rye
1 oz Zubrowka Bison Grass vodka
.5 oz Schladerer Kirschwasser (I used Clear Creek)
.5 oz simple syrup
.5 oz lime juice
1 dash Fee’s Mint Bitters

Shake all with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

For more Templeton Rye recipes, be sure to check out the Barkeep page on our website.

On June 22, 2009, Steve Cannon will begin an 11-day, 300-mile run across Iowa to celebrate life. During those 11 days, he will run with children battling cancer, cancer survivors and those wanting to honor the memory of a family member or friend. The purpose of The Run To Cure Cancer is to create awareness, raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation and to give hope.

When we heard Steve’s story, we thought it was great that he was doing something so unique and cool in Iowa for such a good cause, and we wanted to help in any way. The Templeton Rye bus will be the official support vehicle of The Run To Cure Cancer. Check out Steve’s blog post about supporting “The Run” to learn how you can climb aboard the Templeton Rye bus for a day or a week to help support his cause.

Please join us in supporting Steve at the Fundraising Party on Friday, June 26th at Colby Park in Windsor Heights, Iowa. We will celebrate with an evening of BBQ, beer, pop, and free massages for anyone who runs or bikes to the party.

Templeton Rye intern Claire Bisanz with Meryl & Keith Kerkhoff

The Templeton Rye team is pleased to welcome our new summer intern, Claire Bisanz. Claire is originally from the Twin Cities and is a student at Iowa State University studying Marketing and Spanish.

We are happy to have Claire on the team and look forward to her work helping us continue to develop and execute various strategic plans.

Hi folks,

We are very excited about our new landscaping project at the distillery. We have planted a variety of native flowers and grasses around the distillery, including Indian Grass, Big and Little Bluestem, Butterfly Milkweed, Black Eyed Susan, Spider Wort, Purple Coneflower and Aromatic Aster.

A special thanks to our friends Liz Garst and Elizabeth Hill at Whiterock Conservancy, Gloria from Windy Ridge Flowers in Coon Rapids and Linda and Tobin Bush for all of their great work.

Like most things in our business, it will probably take a few years to be ready, but we are very excited about our collection of native Iowa flowers and grasses. Please come visit us and see for yourself.

All the best,

Scott Bush
President, Templeton Rye

Iowa Governor Chet Culver was in Carroll County over the weekend for the annual Governor’s Pheasant Hunt, and he stopped by the distillery to say hello. We gave Governor Culver a tour, discussed the history of TR, and chatted about opportunities and challenges facing our company. Our team really appreciated the Governor making time to visit us.

Pictured, from left to right: Assistant Master Distiller Keith Kerkhoff, Brand Manager Mike Killmer, President Scott Bush, Governor Chet Culver