Kyrö Distillery Company

The Kyrö origin story is the kind of thing that sounds like a brand-team invention except it actually happened. Five Finnish friends, drinking American rye whisky in a sauna in 2012, realized two things at once: (1) this is the best-tasting whisky we've ever had, and (2) Finland grows more rye per capita than any country on Earth and somehow makes none of it into whisky. By 2014 they'd quit their day jobs, raised the money, bought a former dairy in Isokyrö (Ostrobothnia, western Finland), and built a 100%-Finnish-rye distillery from scratch. We carry them because the result lives up to the story.

Kyrö also makes the Napue gin series — a side project that's become arguably more famous than the whisky. Built on the same wholegrain Finnish rye base, with a botanical bill that leans hard into Finnish foraging tradition (sea buckthorn, meadowsweet, birch leaf, cranberry). Napue Gin won the IWSC "Best Gin & Tonic Gin" award in 2015, which sounds like a niche category until you realize how many gins exist on Earth. We rotate the Dark Gin and Pink Gin in and out of stock; check the lineup below.

There are two interesting things happening at Kyrö. First, they proved Finnish rye terroir can hold up in glass — which sounds obvious in 2026 but in 2014 was a genuinely contested question. Second, they did it without selling out: still independent, still in Isokyrö, still distilling on the same grain they helped reintroduce. If you like American rye but want to taste what rye terroir does in the world's ryeiest country, this is your bottle.