Winter Whiskey is one of New Riff's seasonal limited releases, conceived as a softer, more contemplative bottling to match the colder months. Where the distillery's flagship bourbons and ryes lean on high-rye mash bills and bold proofs, Winter Whiskey takes a different route entirely — a gentler, more rounded expression designed to be sipped slowly beside a fire rather than poured into a cocktail.
Like everything New Riff bottles, it is Bottled in Bond: the product of a single distillery, a single season's distilling, aged at least four years in a federally bonded warehouse, and bottled at 100 US proof. Non-chill filtered and matured in the same brick rickhouses as the distillery's core range overlooking the Ohio River in Newport, Kentucky, it shares the house's signature density of texture despite its softer character.
New Riff was founded in 2014 by the late Ken Lewis and a small team determined to make the distillery a Kentucky institution built on honest grain-to-glass whiskey. Winter Whiskey is very much in that spirit — no smoke, no cask-strength bite, no dramatic story. Just a thoughtful seasonal release that rewards quiet drinking, from one of the most consistent young distilleries in the state. It has become a small annual ritual for collectors who look forward to seeing how each winter's bottling turns out.
