The little brewery in the little town just made a very big move.
Shiner, the Texas outfit that built its name on Bock and never left the small town where it started, dropped its first-ever rye whiskey on Valentine's Day. No roses, no chocolate — just a cask-strength rye bottled at a walloping 125.4 proof and priced at $199 a bottle. For a company that spent more than a century making beer and only got into the spirits game a couple of years ago, it's the kind of swing that says they're not messing around.
The whiskey is called Texas Legend Straight Rye, and it comes from a place most people wouldn't expect to find world-class distilling: Shiner, Texas, population 2,127. That's the same speck on the map where Czech and German immigrants founded the K. Spoetzl Brewery back in 1909, brewing old-world lagers for the ranchers and farmers of South Central Texas. More than a hundred years later, the operation has grown into one of the largest independent craft breweries in the country, with distribution across all 50 states, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and U.S. military bases overseas. But beer was always the whole story — until 2023, when Spoetzl added a distillery to the property and started making vodka, gin, moonshine, and bourbon.
Image credit: Shiner
Now comes the rye, and it's a limited run pulled from just three barrels. That's it. Three barrels from the distillery's very first rye distillation, which took place in December 2023. The fact that they waited over a year to bottle it, rather than rushing something out the door, tells you something about the philosophy driving the operation.
"This release represents a defining moment for Shiner as we continue to evolve beyond brewing and establish our place in Texas whiskey," said Tom Fiorenzi, Director of Brewery and Distillery Operations. "Bottling whiskey from our first rye distillation reflects the long-term vision we have for the distillery and the standards we've set from day one."
Fiorenzi and his team built the mash bill around malted rye, yellow dent corn, and two-row barley — a sweet mash, not a sour one. The spirit was run through the still twice using copper pot distillation, a method that tends to produce a heavier, more flavorful distillate compared to the column stills used by many larger producers. After distillation, the whiskey went into barrels with a heavy toast and level 1 char, which basically means the inside of the barrel got a deep, slow heat treatment before a quick flash of fire. That combination tends to pull out more caramel and vanilla character from the wood while keeping the harshness down.
The barrels then sat in a single-story open-air warehouse, exposed to the full brunt of Texas weather. Anyone who's spent a summer in that part of the state knows what that means — searing heat during the day, some cooling at night, and the kind of temperature swings that force whiskey in and out of the wood at an aggressive pace. That's part of why Texas whiskeys often taste older than their age statements suggest. The climate does a lot of the work.
When the team finally cracked those three barrels open, they decided to bottle the whiskey non-chill filtered and at full cask strength. Non-chill filtering is a choice that preserves oils and fatty acids in the spirit that would otherwise get stripped out. Those compounds carry flavor and give the whiskey a richer mouthfeel. It also means the liquid might get a little hazy if you add ice or cold water, but for most serious whiskey drinkers, that's a feature, not a flaw.
At 62.7% alcohol by volume, this is not a casual sipper straight out of the bottle. A few drops of water will open it up considerably, and that's probably the way to go for a first pour. The tasting notes point to layered cinnamon, clove, and citrus on the front end, with toffee, vanilla, and warm baking spice filling in underneath. That profile makes sense given the mash bill and the barrel treatment — the rye brings the spice and pepper, the corn adds sweetness, and the barley rounds things out. The barrel char and Texas heat do the rest.
The $199 price tag is steep, but it's not out of line for a cask-strength, single-release whiskey from a three-barrel batch. When you're talking about that kind of scarcity, the math gets real simple: there just isn't much of it. Once it's gone, it's gone. And Shiner made the release available only at the K. Spoetzl Brewery and Distillery itself, starting February 14 at 10 in the morning. No online orders. No third-party retailers. You had to go to Shiner to get it.
That kind of distillery-only release strategy has become more common in the whiskey world as producers look to build destination appeal and reward the people willing to make the trip. For Shiner, it also reinforces the connection between product and place that has always been central to the brand. Every drop of Shiner beer has been made in Shiner, Texas, since the beginning. The spirits are no different.
The rye release follows the launch of Shiner's Texas bourbon last fall, which was the distillery's first whiskey to hit the market. Together with the vodka, gin, and moonshine already in the lineup, the bourbon and rye signal a company that's moving deliberately but decisively into a new category. They're not trying to become a whiskey company overnight. They're building a portfolio one release at a time, using the credibility they've earned over 116 years of making beer in a town most people drive right past on the highway.
Whether Texas Legend Straight Rye turns out to be a collector's item or the first chapter of a long-running series probably depends on how the whiskey drinks and how the market responds. But Shiner has never been in a hurry. They spent a century perfecting beer before they ever touched a still. If the rye is any indication, they plan to take the same approach with whiskey — patient, deliberate, and rooted in the same patch of Texas dirt where it all started.
