Diners sample reborn rye whiskey at West Overton Village

A hundred guests gathered Friday in the lower level of the West Overton Village museum to dine on a catered meal and sample the first barrel of rye whiskey distilled at the East Huntingdon site since 1919.

“I keep getting drawn back to it,” Nicktown resident Ed Stock said of the West Overton Distilling Monongahela Rye Whiskey. “I think it’s perhaps smoother. I’m more of a fellow who doesn’t like overwhelming spice.”

The Monongahela Rye was among four rye whiskeys the guests got to taste during the dinner. The first 180 bottles of the whiskey distilled on the site were available for purchase immediately after the repast.

“We weren’t going for a specific flavor profile,” said Aleasha Monroe, West Overton’s distiller. “We were more trying to stay in line with traditional technique and methods.”

That means the reborn West Overton whiskey follows an old recipe: 80% rye, 20% malted barley aged in a 30-gallon charred oak barrel.

“It stays in the barrel about 16 months, no shorter than a year,” Monroe said.

Going a step further to recreate the original West Overton method, the modern West Overton Distilling has planted its own crop of rye nearby.

“There are some green sproutlets that will grow over the winter,” Monroe said. “Hopefully, we’ll be harvesting that next year.”

Guests at Friday’s dinner also were able to listen to a panel of four whiskey experts discuss the history of its production in Western Pennsylvania.

Among the guests was Harlan Overholt, the second cousin, seven times removed, of Abraham Overholt, the grandfather of industrialist Henry Clay Frick. Abraham Overholt was the distiller responsible for the original commercial production of whiskey at West Overton, beginning in 1810.

Harlan Overholt, a banker and winemaker in Pasadena, Calif., attended the dinner with his wife, Stanislava.

While an old family Bible gave clues to his ties to West Overton, the connection didn’t hit home until he discovered the site through Google maps in 2013. He’s since made the trip to the Pennsylvania village, now a museum, several times.

“This is absolutely fantastic,” he said of the new West Overton whiskey production. “I’m very happy it’s going the way it is.”

Production of the original Old Overholt whiskey was stopped in 1919 when the 18th Constitutional amendment — Prohibition — was enacted. It forbade production and sale of “intoxicating liquor” for use as beverages.

Modern whiskey production at West Overton has been four years in the making and had been under consideration for more than a decade. The nonprofit Westmoreland Fayette Historical Society, which operates West Overton Village, created the for-profit company, West Overton Distilling LLC., in 2015.

For more information about West Overton Village, visit westovertonvillage.org or call 724-887-7910.