I am frequently asked “Why do bottles of Rye Whiskey always have green labels?” The short answer is they don’t always have green labels but many of them do. Old Overholt does not have a green label as the prime exception to the rule, but many other rye whiskeys do. Is there a historical reason for this? I don’t think so. Let’s look at the history of rye whiskey labels to see if there is an answer.
The early days of the 19th century, rye whiskey was sold mostly by the barrel and the barrel head would be branded with the brand name – a charcoal black on oak. Glass bottles were expensive and the whiskey bought by the bottle would cost a lot more than if you provided your own bottle to the liquor merchant or grocer and filled it from the barrel. It is not until the late 1880s that bottle costs came down to a point that distillers thought it profitable to bottle their own whiskey. Rye whiskey labels I have seen from before Prohibition were as varied in color as were Bourbon whiskey labels. Old Overholt labels were white or cream colored, Mount Vernon rye labels were yellow. W.L. Weller rye was a white label with an olive green print, as close to a green label as I have found in pre-Prohibition rye whiskey labels.
After Repeal, the existing brands used their pre-Prohibition label designs, modified for the new rules. However, rye whiskey was losing market share and by the 1980s, the category was about dead. A few distillers continued to make rye whiskey – Jim Beam, National Distillers and Wild Turkey were the main distillers of rye in 1980. Even so, the overall market share was small. When rye whiskey started taking off again in the early 2000s, Jimmy Russell would say that his rye whiskey distillation had tripled – they made it three days a year. It is with this rebirth of rye whiskey as a category, that distillers started using green labels for rye whiskey. There is no written rule or historical tradition dictating that they must be green labels, but with Jim Beam and Wild Turkey both using green as their primary color for rye whiskey labels throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the color became associated with rye whiskey. That is my theory as to why there are so many green labels on rye whiskey.
Photos Courtesy of Rosemary Miller