Indiana-based Hard Truth Distilling Co. is best known for its sweet mash whiskeys made from local grains. Its newest release is no exception, but it has a pretty interesting maturation story that sets it apart from the rest. Named “Grounded in Truth Rye," it is pulled from a single barrel matured on the distillery’s pond.
The whiskey was distilled from Hard Truth’s RW-1 mashbill, 94% rye and 6% malted barley. That same recipe is used to make Hard Truth’s flagship rye, along with several of its cask-finished expressions. The newcomer was aged for 5 years and 8 months, spending the first year and a half in Hard Truth’s Rackhouse No.1. After that, the barrel was transferred to a small wooden shed attached to pontoons—with just enough room for one barrel—that floated on a pond at the distillery. The rye spent the remainder of its aging period there and was emptied on July 16, 2024.
Master distiller Bryan Smith says the pond idea was part experiment and part guest attraction. “For more than three years, hundreds of thousands of visitors have seen and asked about the mysterious lone barrel floating on the pond,” he said. (The structure has a window, which offers a view of the barrel.) Believe it or not, the structure is still a federally bonded and registered rickhouse. “We filed the same paperwork and adhered to the same regulations as we have for our other on-site rickhouses that, in total, can hold more than 23,000 barrels.” Smith has already loaded another barrel onto the floating rickhouse, but there isn’t a set timeline on if/when that whiskey will be released.
The barrel produced around 100 bottles, the bulk of which were given to select bourbon societies and clubs—including Lexington Bourbon Society and St. Louis Bourbon Society among others—to be auctioned off to club members along with a commemorative wooden box. 100% of the auction sales will be contributed to Farm Aid, an organization helmed by singers Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Neil Young, that champions American farmers.
The auctions ended on September 8th, but Hard Truth has a limited number of bottles left that will be available for purchase at the distillery. The exact number of these distillery-exclusive bottles—which don’t come with a box—is undisclosed, and Hard Truth hasn’t yet landed on an exact release date or price.
This isn’t Hard Truth’s first time partnering with Farm Aid. The distillery also donated a portion of the sales from its Mellencamp Whiskey Co. collaborative releases, which were made in partnership with John Mellencamp’s son Hud. Like those efforts, the current partnership was made through Hard Truth’s social cause platform Grounded in Truth, the inspiration for this new whiskey’s name. Outside of donations, the platform also led to long-term commitments with two family farms that supply the majority of Hard Truth’s grain.
Water-aged whiskeys like this one are something of a rare bird. Unlike their ship-aged cousins, which tour the globe on voyages that can last for months, these whiskeys instead stay in rickhouses that float on water. The barrels themselves don’t actually travel anywhere, but they still benefit from the ebb and flow of the water beneath them. The rocking motion caused by these waves sloshes the whiskey around inside the barrel, which is said to cause more interaction with the wood and thus more flavor extraction. Another water-aged whiskey maker is O.H. Ingram, which ages its whiskey on retrofitted barges moored to the banks of the Mississippi River.
