Iowa Whiskey – 'The Good Stuff' – Pairs with Pork (But it's not What You're Thinking)

Here’s a story that is so inherently Iowa that it’ll make you squeal with delight.

Let’s start from the beginning, with the charming back story behind Templeton Rye that goes back to the days of Prohibition and the Great Depression in the western Iowa hamlet of Templeton, Iowa.

It’s a story of community and how the normally law abiding residents banded together and weathered the tough times, producing a bootleg whiskey in stills across Carroll County that Chicago mobster Al Capone developed a thirst and taste for and branded “the good stuff.”

Almost everyone in town was in on it, or so the legend goes. Mothers put the barrels on rockers of their chairs, gently agitating the spirits while they put their babies to sleep. When the “revenuers,” as federal agents were called, came to town, the usually hatless sheriff put on a hat to warn those involved in the surreptitious trade to put a lid on it. Women draped their long skirts over the barrels, concealing them from authorities.

Or so the stories go.

The lore has been woven through western Iowa history and Scott Bush – a pretty darned smart guy who grew up listening to the stories at the knee of his formerly bootlegging grandfather before going off to MIT, used his business acumen to make “the Good Stuff” a legally available quantity.

Iowans, and whiskey aficionados in a handful of other U.S. states, fairly swooned over his award-winning concoction, made from the original recipe. As Bush tells it, he to swear on everything he considers holy that he wouldn’t divulge the recipe or some of the details of the story that were passed, one whisper at a time, to the Templeton Rye cache back in the day.

In the true spirit of what’s old is new again, the company recently announced that it’s pairing Templeton Rye with another Iowa staple – pigs (there 20.6 million pigs in Iowa in 2012, according to the Iowa Pork Producers Association, or more than six times as many people live in the state).

We’re not talking pork, the product that comes from pigs, but the pigs themselves.

Back in the day, the hogs ate the mash left in the barrel.

They will again under the Templeton Rye Heritage Pork Project, born after visiting some of the top chefs in the country and fans of the farm-to-table food movement – including culinary events such as Aspen Food & Wine, Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival, Cochon 555, Kohler Food & Wine, Green City Market Chef's BBQ, Slow Food Chicago, Chicago Gourmet and Slow Pig.

The culinary world has embraced Templeton Rye, using it as in recipes.

The Des Moines Register’s Juice magazine reports that the company will raise a small herd heritage Duroc pigs fattened near Des Moines on a diet that includes spent mash. When they reach 210 pounds, they will be processed in Iowa.

The pork should be available in July.