The Strange But True Story Of Tony Cask Rye

The infamous notebook from which the Tony Cask was born (photo by me).

I’ve never had a whiskey named after me before, so you can imagine my excitement when, earlier this week, I finally got to taste Angel’s Envy’s Tony Cask rye. That’s not its official name, unfortunately — you’ll be able to find it later this month with the moniker Angel’s Envy 10 Year Cask Strength Rye. More descriptive, I suppose. But Angel’s Envy distiller/blender Owen Martin calls it Tony Cask, at least in my presence, and that’s good enough for me.

I wrote about Tony Cask and its sibling whiskey, the 2026 Cask Strength Bourbon, for Food & Wine. The link for the article is -> HERE <-. You will not find any mention of Tony Cask therein, because it’s a straight news article and not a review or a piece of “gonzo journalism,” as Owen likes to call my first-person rambles that make it into print. But this seems like a perfect place to tell the story.

It all started back in June, 2024. A publicist for Angel’s Envy heard that I was going to be in Louisville on other business and coordinated a visit to the distillery, which is smack in the middle of downtown, and a hang with Owen, who had taken the reins from Wes Henderson the previous year. I’d never met him before, but I immediately liked him. And I really liked the desk in his office, which was covered with samples and works-in-progress, a few of which he let me taste. He took great pains to explain what he was up to, even showing me his notebook in which he scribbled blending calculations and the like. Being a journalist, I asked if I could take some photos of the notebook, even if I didn’t know quite what I was looking at. Being a cheeky bastard, I then posted a photo of a page on Instagram. Fortunately, there was no blowback from Owen or the brand, so I apparently exposed no state secrets.

In fact, through no intention of my own, I actually wound up preserving some valuable intel. Fast forward a year or so. Owen had lost the notebook in question. But he had at least one page he needed, thanks to my photo on the ‘gram, which just happened to contain the information — ages, barrels, etc. — on how to create Angel’s Envy’s first 10 year old rye. I forget whether he declared it the Tony Cask Rye or I demanded he call it that in tribute to my greatness. But hey, in the big picture, does it really matter? That’s what we’ve called it ever since.

My sample of Tony Cask. The real bottle is much fancier.

To give you an idea of just how far in advance booze brands plan their releases, the Tony Cask Rye is being released a full 22 months after I took the fateful pic of Owen’s notebook, and several months after it was blended.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that at some point I actually forgot why we were calling it Tony Cask. I realized my brain had misplaced this important nugget of information around Christmas — three months or so before its release date — and frantically looked at all texts between myself and Owen, hoping he’d mentioned it at some point. No luck. I didn’t let on until I absolutely had to, when I interviewed him about the 2026 Dual Cask Strength Release for Food & Wine. Not that it was going in the article, but I figured, at this point there was no way I was going to remember it, so full disclosure was probably the way to go. To his credit, Owen didn’t mercilessly mock me for forgetting. Hell, he’s the one who lost his notebook, after all, so nobody’s coming out of this saga smelling like a rose. But I still give him credit for not busting my chops too much.

Anyway, Tony Cask is here for all the world to taste, and if you like rum cask-finished rye or think you might, it’s pretty terrific. I’ve been a fan of standard AE Rye for ages — it’s one of my favorite whiskeys to use in Manhattans — and name not withstanding, the Cask Strength doesn’t disappoint. To read more about it, once again, here’s your -> LINK <-. There are fewer than 11,000 bottles out in the wild, which sounds like a lot… until it’s gone. Just saying.