Welcome to Taste Test, where every week our critic Jonah Flicker explores the most buzzworthy and interesting whiskeys in the world. Check back each Sunday for his latest whiskey review.

I’ve written about celebrity-backed booze brands before, and most of the time that meant tequila. It’s just the easiest spirit for this type of partnership—there are so many established distilleries already making a ton of different brands, so why not just slap a well-known name on the bottle? Whiskey is a different story, because it has to spend at least some time in a barrel, so the rewards are not as immediate. That didn’t deter actor William H. Macy, however, who has been an investor and “spokesdude” for Colorado’s Woody Creek Distillers since 2018. The distillery’s latest release is a bold 10-year-old rye that is definitely worth trying (and, yes, it does have his name slapped on the bottle).

Woody Creek was founded in 2012 by Mary and Pat Scanlan along with Mark Kleckner, and has been making vodka, gin, and whiskey since its early days. The whiskey in question here is called William H. Macy Reserve Rye Third Edition. Of course, Macy is not actually spending late nights at the distillery twisting knobs and loading the wash into fermenters. But according to the brand, he was instrumental in selecting the liquid that went into this bottle, blind tasting different samples with head of distillation Stephen Julander, the Scanlans, and bar industry figure Sean Kenyon. And as it turns out, they did a nice job here.

Reserve Rye is made from a mashbill of 83 percent Elbon rye (a winter varietal that was grown locally in Colorado), 14 percent Dent corn, and three percent malted barley, and matured for a full decade in new charred oak (it’s a blend of just five barrels). It’s also bottled-in-bond, meaning it’s exactly 100 proof, at least four years old, and the product of one distillery and one distillation season.

This is not a 95/5 rye like you might find coming out of MGP. This is also not some Kentucky rye with the bare minimum 51 percent rye grain. What you have here is much more assertive and much less sweet, a rye whiskey that immediately lets you know it’s rye whiskey, there’s just no mistaking it. And that’s a very good thing for the hardcore rye lovers out there. There are notes of vanilla, licorice, grape jelly, orange zest, oak, menthol, coriander, pine, blueberry, and barrel-aged maple syrup on the palate. At 100 proof, it sips well neat or over a large ice cube. I also tried it in a Manhattan with great success, although the $200 price tag might dissuade some from doing this (I say go for it, life is too short).

As you can tell from the name, this is the third release of William H. Macy Reserve Rye, and it’s different from the first two in terms of mashbill (the first was 80 percent rye and 20 percent malted barley; the second was 100 percent rye). I am looking forward to seeing this whiskey changes over the coming years with new iterations—maybe another new recipe, perhaps an older age statement. In the meantime, the real rye whiskey fans should give this a try.

Score: 89