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

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.

4:00 - 6:00 PM - Free Templeton Rye distillery tours for ticket holders

9:00 PM - The Nadas

Tickets are available for $10 per person plus a nominal Eventbrite fee in advance (below) and will be available for $15 per person at the door if you choose not to take the charter bus.

We are also bringing three charter buses from Des Moines to Templeton for the party. A seat on the bus is $50 per person plus a nominal Eventbrite fee and includes your ticket to the show. These seats are limited so get yours today.

Buses will be departing the Jordan Creek Costco parking lot in West Des Moines at 4:00 p.m. sharp on July 31st. The buses are air-conditioned with restrooms and will allow beverages (cans or plastic only - no glass) in soft-side coolers. After the concert, the buses will depart from Templeton at 11:30 p.m. arriving back in West Des Moines just after 1:00 a.m. Cabs will be available in the Costco parking lot upon return if requested.

Reserve your seat on the Rock & Rye Charter or purchase advance tickets:

You will receive an email confirmation with your ticket purchase confirming your order. Keep this for your records. Tickets purchased online can be picked up at will call on the day of 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.

We recently visited one of our favorite Iowa companies, La Quercia in Norwalk, Iowa, producers of premium quality American prosciutto and other products. Our friends Herb and Kathy Eckhouse founded the company because they knew they could make a world class product right here in Iowa. La Quercia has been incredibly successful to date and has shocked many of the taste makers in their industry. Their product takes a long time to produce, and they have had trouble keeping up with demand because they have refused to sacrifice quality. If some of this sounds familiar, you will understand why we, and especially Mr. Killmer, are big fans of La Quercia.

Please check them out at www.laquercia.us and on Facebook.

TR Distiller Keith Kerkhoff had a chance to catch up with one of his old coaches from the Dallas Cowboys, the one and only Mike Ditka.

Keith and Coach Ditka shared some old training camp and Coach Landry stories over a glass of The Good Stuff.

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