Whisky maker revives rye grain from 1878 shipwreck
A legal quirk and “really rare set of circumstances” made it possible for Mammoth Distilling in Michigan to resurrect an extinct rye strain from a wooden schooner that sunk 140 years ago.
In 1878, the same year that the first commercial telephone exchange was established in the United States, and the phonograph (an early form of gramophone) was patented by Thomas Edison, a vessel carrying a cargo of rye grain quietly sunk to the bottom of one of the Great Lakes of America.
The good ship James R. Bentley met its demise when it hit a submerged sand bank on Lake Huron on the Michigan/Canada border during a storm in November 1878, and has languished on the lake bed for the last 140 years. Now, thanks to the perseverance of a local whisky distiller, its haul is about to be put to use at last.
Forgotten strain
Chad Munger, founder and CEO of Mammoth Distilling, is working with scientists to restore remnants of the 37,000 bushels of rye onboard the ship when it sunk in order to bring back a long forgotten strain of rye.
“It’s a land-raised variety that would have character that we haven’t seen in this country, because it’s all been bred and pollinated away,” Munger told Fox News. “It’s historically relevant and super interesting.”
However, gaining access to the rye was only made possible following a complicated legal dispute.
Illinois-based diver and shipwreck hunter Paul Ehorn embarked on a bid to win legal ownership of the James R. Bentley in order to avoid prosecution after he took a salvaged piece of the ship to a museum. Usually, shipwrecks in the Great Lakes are considered to be property of the State. However, Ehorn won his case, making the Bentley wreck “a rarity”, according to Munger.
Subsequently, a set of new laws have been established in Michigan “that preclude individuals from owning shipwrecks,” he added.
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19th century DNA
Last year, Munger contacted Ehorn to request permission to carry out a dive in order to retrieve samples of the rye onboard using “special extraction tubes”.
Since then the distillery owner has been working with Dr. Eric Olson, a wheat breeding and genetics professor at Michigan State University, to sequence the genome of the rye’s DNA. “The quality of the grain was there. It was just as though it was the same as in the late 1800s,” said Olson.
Calling the Bentley variety a “historical treasure”, Olson added: “it gives us a snapshot of the exact variety of rye being grown in the Great Lakes region in the late 1800s.”
The majority of whiskey made before Prohibition was rye whiskey, which had to contain at least 51% rye grain. “150 years ago, Michigan was the rye-growing capital of North America,” Munger explained. He hopes the restored Bentley rye will help to “reinvigorate a segment of the Michigan agricultural economy that’s gone dormant and that really needs to be revived.”
According to Mammoth Distillery it will be about three to four years before it is able to release a commercial whiskey made from Bentley rye, but it has already produced a spirit flavoured using wood from the shipwreck.
db has reached out to Mammoth for further details regarding the next steps in the process, and whether it intends to eventually make Bentley rye whiskey a permanent addition to its range.
In 2023, a similar bid was made to salvage 280 barrels of rare whiskey from a wreck in Lake Michigan that sunk in 1854. The project was anticipated to cost around US$10,000, according to the diver who applied for the permit to remove the artefacts from The Westmoreland.
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Mammoth Distillery is so much fun to work with in terms of creativity with single barrel picks for retailers. They are innovative and accommodating which makes for some great whiskies. Not surprised that they came up with this rye project.Can’t wait to actually see it come to fruition.