Something’s Brewing

The distillery’s road to kosher was long and winding, perhaps unnecessarily so. Ten years ago, New Riff fired up its brand-new boiler and filled its first 13 barrels of bourbon. But while the distillery was new, its owner Ken Lewis was already a well-known figure in Kentucky. About three decades ago, Ken opened The Party Source, which sold all kinds of liquor and alcohol, along with party supplies. With time, the Party Source became the biggest liquor store in the country, attracting Kentuckians as well as customers from neighboring Ohio and Indiana (the local “tristate”) to their specialized bottles and competitive prices. Ken fought to allow liquor to be sold on Sunday, and he designed his new store to be similar to a Costco grocery shopping experience, with wide aisles featuring wide selections, making it simpler to navigate and more attractive to different types of shoppers.

Ken continued to expand. In 2014 he came up with a new idea: to open a distillery. With the Party Source earning gross revenues of over $50 million annually, he figured he had a cash cow at the ready to fund this new project.

But archaic, Prohibition-era Kentucky regulations that forbid a retail liquor store to own a distillery thwarted that plan. To skirt the issue, Ken opted to have his daughter Mollie own the distillery, while he would continue to own the Party Source.

The state of Kentucky said no.

Ken was undeterred; he gave up ownership of the store he’d run for 20 years and sold it to his loyal employees as part of an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). While he could have generated more profit with a standard sale, Ken took pride in giving retirement security to his longtime employees, 70 of whom now have a direct stake in the company. Today New Riff’s flagship store shares a parking lot with the Party Source.

While Ken was keen on realizing his dream, it wasn’t without risks. He left behind a profitable retail business in favor of a venture that — with the purchase of a large property, construction of a distillery and building, and employment of staff when there was no product yet to sell — left him heavily in debt. It would take five years for the barrels to age and the distillery to start bringing in a profit.

It was only once construction for the new distillery began that they discovered that the Ohio River Aquifer flowed beneath their building, which would be incredibly useful in bourbon making. Ken saw this as a sign of providence, that he was doing the right thing.

Missed Sale

Congregation Zichron Eliezer member Sam Shaffer moved with his family from Columbus to Cincinnati eight years ago. He took a job in downtown Cincinnati as a color engineer (the people who made sure the fruit is the perfect shade of red on the Pomegranate shopping bags), and during his lunch breaks, Sam would often make the five-minute drive to Northern Kentucky to visit smaller liquor shops and look for “old dusties” — tucked away bottles whose owner did not appreciate their value.

In 2018, Ken Lewis finally released his first batch of bourbon with the New Riff label. When Sam tried one of those first 2018 single barrel New Riff bottles, he was excited.

“I collected a bunch of them and thought they were the greatest thing I had ever tasted,” he remembers.

Soon after, Sam shared his find it with a friend, Dovid Bidnick, who wondered if the rookie distiller wasn’t the same man who had owned the Party Source. When Sam confirmed it was, Dovid told him Ken Lewis was Jewish. Sam knew that Louisville’s Heaven Hill distillery was owned by the Shapira family, and that the Sazerac company, which owns Frankfort’s Buffalo Trace, was owned by billionaire William Goldring. But he had never heard that rookie distiller Ken Lewis was Jewish.

Dovid insisted, telling him that local rabbanim used to sell chometz for the Party Source, and when Sam investigated further, he discovered that Ken Lewis was indeed a member of the tribe, a Reform Jew from Louisville whose grandparents had emigrated from Russia to Rochester, New York, before moving to Kentucky. Ken wanted to be a teacher, but his father convinced him to help in the store to supplement his schooling — a great Jewish entrepreneur story, but an issue for anyone who bought or wanted to enjoy the newly released New Riff bottles.

Ken had been selling the Party Source chometz since frum New York customers had asked him to do so. When Ken gave up the Party Source and began running the distillery, he unfortunately missed a year in 2018, rendering all the barrels since the distillery’s opening in 2014 as chometz she’avar alav haPesach and prohibited to kosher consumers.

New Riff continued selling their chometz every year, but because of that missed year, the first chometz-free run wouldn’t be ready until 2022. In the interim, the kashrus agency put out an alert that New Riff’s bourbon was halachically prohibited because of chometz.

Going Kosher

When Rabbi Lazer Fischer joined Cincinnati Kosher (now called Central Kosher) in 2021, he asked about the distillery’s status. Pesach of 2020 was a struggle for all kashrus agencies, who traditionally meet with factory owners to sell their chometz, but because many of them were shut down in that height of Covid, they had to resort to Zoom and remote options to do so. Looking back at their records, Cincinnati Kosher realized that New Riff had not reached out prior to Pesach 2020 and that again, their chometz hadn’t been sold. Unfortunately, this meant bringing New Riff bottles to the kosher consumer would take another four years.

After selling the chometz in 2021, Cincinnati Kosher met with Ken and Mollie, who worked for her father as director of sales, to pitch the idea of getting a proper kosher certification. Rather than check the box on a once-a-year Pesach sale, the rabbis proposed, why not go all in and do everything l’chatchilah, so that in a few years’ time their product could proudly display a hechsher and be available to all kosher consumers?

Ken loved the idea. While the pre-Pesach sale felt like a tedious chore whose meaning he didn’t connect to, the idea of going fully kosher resonated. As they spoke, Ken dug deep into his past and spoke about his grandparents’ shtetl and their lives in the ghetto, taking great pride in the idea of connecting to his heritage by going kosher. Mollie, who had become involved in Cincinnati’s Mayerson Jewish Community Center as a board member since 2022, was equally enthusiastic.

Ken and Mollie also saw the value of kashrus certification from a business perspective. It aligned with their deep commitment to quality. Just as they’d committed to be “bottled in bond” (“BIB” designation holds bourbons to a rigorously high standard), they felt the kashrus certification would similarly boost the value of their product. They’d also noted that the New Riff bottles weren’t selling well in the New York area, with Orthodox Jewish consumers avoiding them, and were hopeful that kashrus certification would address that.

Once New Riff officially signed up for Cincinnati Kosher’s hashgachah, the agency obviously also took care of selling their chometz. They arranged that all barrels filled after Pesach 2020 were sold to the distillery’s cofounder, Jay Erisman. The contract gave Jay ownership of the barrels of whiskey until their maturity date. This way, even if a chometz sale were not to take place again, the barrels would still be owned by a non-Jew. Upon their maturation (after a minimum of four years), the contract stipulated that Jay could either pay the millions the barrels were worth or sell them back to New Riff.

Even with the contract in place, Rabbi Fischer continued to head down to Kentucky before Pesach to sell the distillery’s chometz each year, and as an additional precaution, the Lewis family signed a document appointing the rabbis to sell the chometz in every subsequent year.

Of course, the kashrus certification covered much more than only the mechiras chometz. New Riff installed dedicated drums, under lock and key, so when a barrel designated for the kosher run is ready, it stays in those locked drums until bottling. This satisfies the concern of kavush k’mevushal, when even a cold liquid that sits in a container for more than 24 hours is halachically considered to be cooked, because of the transfer of flavor between the liquid and the container.

Bottling for the kosher line is done first thing in the morning, once the lines have been cleaned the night before. New Riff also has a digital screening system in place, so when someone asks to buy through the kosher single barrel program, a Magen David pops up at the backend, triggering the computer system to knock out all nonkosher options and allow the guest to select and taste only from barrels in the kosher program.

Under the watchful eye of Rabbi Lazer Fischer, the chometz has been sold like clockwork for the past three years. Toward the end of 2024, the barrels that were put in the rickhouse after Pesach of 2020 finally matured and were ready for bottling. For the next year and a half, only single barrel bottles will be available with a hechsher, as the flagship bourbon, made of blends of up to 50 barrels, will still be mixed with bourbon made prior to the magic 2020 date. In two years, there will still be some bottles without a hechsher: special-run bottles made from older barrels, and New Riff rye bottles made with sherry casks, so customers should still look for the CK hechsher before purchasing.

Bourbon Ballot

Last summer, as the maturity date of the kosher barrels neared, members of Congregation Zichron Eliezer’s hashkamah minyan had a great idea. Rather than wait for the first certified bottles to hit stores so they could serve it at their kiddush, they could take advantage of their proximity and the rapport Ken had developed with the kosher-keeping community to actually go and select the barrel for the first kosher run.

After Corey led us around the distillery and a beaming Rabbi Fischer showed us all the kashrus safeguards in place, we went to a tasting room. In front of each seat were five tasting tubes, an empty glass, and another glass filled with crackers.

“Can we see the box?”

“Oh, great, it’s Manischewitz!” (Another Cincinnati company.)

There was also a medicine dropper with water drawn from the Ohio River Alluvial Aquifer running below the building, to be added to the bourbon, which some contend brings out the flavor.

In front of each seat was a list of what each of the test tubes had in it: barrel ID, distillation date, and the tasting notes of the lucky staff member whose job it is to taste whiskey all day (there are 12 of them). Corey left us alone in the room to taste and negotiate.

The experience was eerily similar to jury duty, with the right side of the room advocating strongly for the unique flavor of whiskey number one (“Aroma — grainy, earthy. Palate — spicy, honeycomb”). The left side of the room was leaning toward test tube number three, a more classic whiskey that would easily be enjoyed at a kiddush. Ultimately, we agreed that it was a shame to go down to the distillery only to pick something similar to what would be available in stores, and that’s when test tube number two, a dark horse until then, received a second look.

When Corey — our jury foreman — returned, he called for a final vote. Number one received four votes, number two received two votes, and the lone scotch drinker abstained. With the final decision made, it was time to meet our barrel.

First we marked it with a Vaad sticker. Then, under Corey’s watchful eye, we squeezed whiskey from a hole in our newly tagged barrel into bigger test tube bottles to take home and sample, using a “whiskey thief” (what can only be described as an extra-large straw) to extract the juice. It was a struggle to dip this huge straw in while plugging the top hole to keep the air in the barrel and balancing the glass flask at the same time, and yes, spillage did occur.

After everyone was finished, we used a mallet and a bung (a wooden plug) to seal the hole in the barrel, which would be ready for pickup in the next few weeks. We all felt ready for the Shabbos meal and a good nap, but it was Thursday morning, and off everyone went to work.

Later, the call came that the cases had arrived: 200 bottles of bourbon, $51.60 each. The pickup truck was arranged, cash and Zelles sent, and Sam’s house became ground zero for bourbon pickup. Each bottle had not only a CK hechsher, but was also laser-emblazoned with the words “Hashkamah Way of Life,” and a picture of three hashkamah guys dancing on Purim.

As 200 bottles were too much for the few dozen hashkamah stalwarts (note: I am not one of them; I davened hashkamah once for a bar mitzvah), some of these bottles went to friends and friends of friends, all the way from the West Coast up to our neighbors in Canada and even to some Jews of Brooklyn. With off-the-charts reviews, everyone kept asking if there were more to buy (there were not).

A few months ago, New Riff bottled other barrels for frum stores. New Riff bottles with CK logos can now be found from Lakewood to L.A. and everywhere in between. But while the taste may be similar to our personally selected run, that bottle will always have a special place in our hearts and at our Shabbos tables.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1058)