Pliny the Elder on Rye

Author

Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder on Rye

Author: Pliny the Elder
Source: Natural History, Book 18.40 (trans. Rackham et al.)
Advent placement: 2025-12-01 (paired with [[01-redemption-straight-rye-whiskey]])

Theme: Rye “is a very poor food and only serves to avert starvation.”

Verbatim source text

Reproduced from calendar/2025-12-01.qmd (Whisk(e)y Advent 2025).

Pliny the Elder wrote that rye “is a very poor food and only serves to avert starvation”1. So take a sip and suffer in silence as you assess what a rye-forward grainbill can taste like; it should give us some good context for the ryes to come. Classic rye tasting notes can include:

Footnotes

  1. Pliny the Elder. Natural History. Translated by H. Rackham, W. H. S. Jones, and D. E. Eichholz. 10 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: W. Heinemann, 1938–1962. Book 18, section 40.↩︎