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Outside of the boutique world of whisky connoisseurship, it takes a minor miracle for a bottle of bourbon to make the mainstream media.
Forbes readers saw the headline, “World’s Best Bourbon Costs Only $40.”
For a business audience, as for a bourbon drinker, that’s mildly interesting news.
But for a Jewish reader looking behind the headlines, there’s a far greater story.
Whisky is chametz (leavened) and therefore must be sold or destroyed prior to Pesach. After Pesach, any chametz that was not sold becomes permanently non-kosher. While New Riff whiskies are all Pesach-compliant, that was not always the case.
New Riff President Mollie Lewis explained that her family-owned business’s transition to Pesach observance began decades ago when her father Ken operated a retail boutique, the Party Source.
“Some of our best customers and close friends are Orthodox Jews. Starting in the early 2000s, Ken would sell all of the chametz to someone for the period of Passover, then buy it back, and he continued that tradition into New Riff.... We have a rabbi who officiates. It’s a wonderful thing—it’s our nod to our history, it’s our nod to our consumers, and we just believe it’s the right thing to do.”
Lewis made that comment on a December, 2020 podcast interview with Rabbi Drew Kaplan.
But several details in her comments caught the attention of astute listeners who questioned the halachic validity of the sale, including describing it as “very informal.”
Since halachah requires the sale of chametz to be made with a formal, legally-binding contract, Lewis’s comment suggested that the necessary legal and religious rigor may have been absent.
Rabbi Kaplan describes what happened:
“While on the show, one question we discussed regarded their selling of their whisky for Passover, as it is chametz, which ostensibly sounded satisfactory. However, thanks to the thoughtful listenership of the show, I received questions as to what the actual situation was concerning their selling of their chametz and discovered that, while they were used to having sold their chametz, owing to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic only a few weeks prior to Passover, they had a lot going on and it did not end up happening in 2020.”
As a result of the interview (and the listener inquiries), New Riff Kosher formally engaged Cincinnati Kosher to certify their products beginning in 2021.
Now, a whisky matures in the barrel for at least four years. Therefore, the first kosher New Riff reached the market in 2025. And that’s the year it started winning major awards, including two double gold medals at the John Barleycorn Awards and their Balboa Rye being ranked fourth in the world by Whisky Advocate.
But the biggest honor came at the World Whisky Awards—held on February 8, 2026, where their very first strictly kosher whiskey was named World’s Best Bourbon.
Judges described the New Riff Bourbon as “lemon zest and butterscotch on the nose,” leading to “a bright palate with cinnamon, caramel, fresh fig, vanilla cookie, sweet pastry, dried leather, pumpernickel rye, corned beef and brine.” One finishes the experience with the taste of “caramel, lemon peel, crumb cookie and coffee.”
As compelling as that whisky surely is to the palate, New Riff has also achieved spiritual greatness: the Lewis family’s heightened attention to kashrus has been followed by grants and other support for the Cincinnati Jewish community.
If whisky is your favorite l’chaim, and Kentucky Bourbon is your favorite whisky, then a world-class vintage selling for $40 a bottle is surely something to toast. And knowing that the Lewis family has raised the spiritual bar for their company surely gives greater simcha to every glass.
Shabbat Shalom ... and l'Chaim!
This message may also be read on Times of Israel.
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