Keystone Rosen Rye
Project
Of all the grains that could have been chosen to begin work with on the SeedSpark™ Project, why choose Rosen rye? The choice to focus on Rosen was made for two main reasons:
1. Rosen rye is historically documented as being an important part of the grain bills (whiskey recipes) at Michter’s Distillery in Schaefferstown, Pennsylvania. Michter’s Distillery (a.k.a. Historic Bomberger’s Distillery) was not only one of the oldest and most well-respected distilleries in Pennsylvania, it was also the most recent of hundreds of historic distilleries in Pennsylvania to close its doors for good. Paying homage to the whiskey recipes that helped define PA whiskey in its heyday was always an important part of the inspiration to use Rosen rye.
2. Rosen rye was of specific interest to the owners of Stoll & Wolfe Distillery, Erik Wolfe and Avianna Ponzi. Their master distiller, Dick Stoll, expressed his desire to work with the grains he had used at Michter’s Distillery, but they knew Rosen rye was no longer commercially available to them. When Laura Fields met and spoke with them about their desire to use Rosen in their rye whiskey recipes, the decision to work with Rosen was firmly resolved.
Work on this special project began in 2015 when the Delaware Valley Fields Foundation partnered with Greg Roth at Penn State’s Agricultural Extension. The mission was to return Rosen Rye to Pennsylvania farmers and, in turn, to its distillers. The first very small amount of Rosen (5 ounces) from the USDA seed bank was planted in the fall of 2015. By 2016, Penn State had grown a few pounds of seed, and by the following year (funded by the Delaware Valley Fields Foundation), they had nearly an acre! By harvest in the summer of 2018, there was enough Rosen rye to distill into whiskey with about 50 pounds of seed left over to replant in the fall. After the harvest in July of 2019, Stoll & Wolfe Distillery had over 500 pounds of milled Rosen Rye (donated by the Delaware Valley Fields Foundation), and on September 7th, 2019 that rye was distilled into Pennsylvania rye whiskey.
The 2020 summer harvest has yielded nearly 6,000 pounds of Keystone Rosen rye from our 3 growing locations across Pennsylvania. In the fall of 2020, over 20 acres of Keystone Rosen rye seed (2,650 pounds) was planted. The following year, that amount was more than doubled. The 2022 harvest yielded nearly 100,000 pounds of grain! Farm partners of the SeedSpark™ Project anticipate planting over 400 acres of Keystone Rosen rye in the fall of 2022!
