Why I drink rye
And why it matters to UX
“My design process is whiskey. Dylan’s is different. He uses rye.” — Patrick Neeman
When Patrick was hired on as the director of design, he put a bottle of Redbreast 12 Whiskey on my desk. The statement was simple. We’re designers. That’s why we drink. (And yes, it does make us UX designers sound like the biggest lushes in tech.)
Now, I like whiskey. Whisky. Bourbon. The brown alcohols of all sort. But more than anything else, I love rye.
And the fact I love rye says a lot about how I design.
Why rye?
Rye is hard. Rye is unforgiving. It lacks the mellowness and sweetness of bourbon, the smooth peaty flavor of whisky. It bites back. Hard. With spice and burn akin to rubbing Tabasco-soaked steel wool on your throat. Drink a shot of rye like it’s bourbon and you’ll be yelping in pain seconds later.
Rye is a complicated drink, with a complicated American history. It was forgotten after Prohibition shut down its production, then neglected as the Southern bourbon runners rushed into the gap after Prohibition and the lack of scotch after WWII. Bourbon became the coolness, while rye was left to a handful of old men and bottom-shelf drinkers. Its revival is a long time coming, and it’s quickly turning into the cool drink of the craft cocktail folk.
Rye is different. To approach it means to endure a lot of complications, and it turns many away who want an easy drinking brown liquor. But for those who have had a Manhattan with rye instead of bourbon, they see what rye offers — a completeness—that is missing in bourbon, or even in Irish whiskey or Scotch whisky.
How this relates to design
The difference between whiskey and rye is like the difference between consumer design and enterprise design. Whiskey is for the masses; rye is a niche drink. Whiskey seeks to be forgiving to drinkers; rye does not negotiate. Whiskey can be complex; rye doesn’t know any other way.
And rye is rough. Old — it was the American liquor long before Kentuckians turned to corn for their mash.
Rye lacks an easy template. There’s no iOS visual language to lean on in enterprise. Just as whiskey drinkers get caught out by the complexity of rye, so too do consumer UX designers wilt in the face of the insanity of enterprise UX.
But man, do I love insanity. And love hard. It’s why enterprise design appeals to me more than consumer design.
What I like
I divide rye into three groups: Neat ryes (ones I’ll drink straight since they’re too good for cocktails), cocktail ryes (cheaper ryes that aren’t great straight but mix well), and flexible ryes (ones that I’ll drink or mix).
My favorites:
Neat: Thomas Handy. It’s a hard one to come by — the bottles come out in the fall and are gone within weeks—but when you can, it’s immensely rewarding. It’s perhaps the most refined of the ryes out there, just smooth enough to trick you into thinking it’s a 10 year old bourbon… and then reminds you, politely, but forcefully, that it is a *rye*, thank you very much. Others in this group: Whistlepig, Angel’s Envy, Colonel EH Taylor.
Flexible: Michter’s. An old-school rye based loosely on the rye our Founding Fathers drank, it has a nice spice on the tongue, but also a hearty backbone for all the rye cocktails out there. Others in this group: Templeton, Sazerac, Rittenhouse, Russell’s Reserve.
Cocktail: Bulleit Rye. Mind you, I’ll drink Bulleit straight. But it’s way better in a Manhattan or a Presbyterian. And cheap enough that I don’t have any problems in using it as my go-to cocktail rye. Others in this group: Woodinville, Old Overholt, Jim Beam Rye.
Last thoughts
I don’t have any problem with rye on the rocks or with a little water. But I like it straight.
Yes, my design process is driven by rye. But that’s because I like hard things, and I’m just a little insane. My hope is that just as rye is leaving the bottom shelf of the liquor store thanks to small batch distillers, so too might enterprise design come out of the darkness in the hands of designers who don’t fear complexity and a little insanity.
