Kansas City Whiskey Is A Thing? Maybe(e)

Rieger’s whiskey has either been around since 2014 or since 1887 with a 90-plus year gap, depending on how you look at it. (Photo courtesy J. Rieger & Co.)

About five or six years ago, I visited Kansas City for the first time, and left probably ten pounds heavier. I got to sample the full range of the city’s cuisine, from elegant French fare to the barbecue for which the city is known, and was really blown away by how much diversity there was in the culinary landscape. The bar scene was no less impressive, although the only one I remember from this vantage point is Manifesto, a small, dark basement speakeasy run by sommelier/bartender/restauranteur Ryan Maybee. The shadow he cast over the city’s food and beverage scene was, and is, enormous — he also had a restaurant in the Rieger Hotel, which was built by Alexander Rieger, whose father, Jacob Rieger, had founded a whiskey distillery in the city in 1887.

If it wasn’t for Maybee’s curiosity about that distillery, and his desire to revive it, Kansas City whiskey might not be a thing today. But it’s here, and judging from the liquid evidence, it’s pretty damn good (Rieger’s also makes everything from gin to amaro, and what I’ve tried of their portfolio is very fine as well). Not that he did it by himself — he was assisted by industry giants like Steve Olsen and Dave Pickerell, not to mention a descendant of Jacob Rieger himself. But Ryan Maybee was the catalyst for the whole thing. And for that I raise a glass of Rieger’s Bottled-in-Bond bourbon, which I wrote up for the good folks at Forbes (link is -> HERE <-), in his honor.