This picture shows the Cockeysville Distilling Company building. One of the few remanants, along with last week’s smokestack picture of Maryland’s proud Rye producing heritage.
The Cockeysville area was known for it’s Rye long before this building was built as it was home to the original Sherwood distillery. The Sherwood brand was built by the Wight famly in the late 1800s, based out of their distillery which was locaed just a bit across the street from this building, near what is today called Wight avenue.
The name Sherwood, which still remains on a nearby road and church, seems to have first come from the famous forest, to then be used as the name of the Taylor family’s estate in Cockeysville. The estate lent land to be used for the Sherwood church, which still stands on Sherwood road, and then somehow the name ended up (begrudgingly or not) on bottles of rye being produced across the street.
After Prohibition, and when the distillery was no longer under Wight ownership, it was moved to Westminseter. Not too much later, it was sold to a whiskey conglomerate and the MD works were shut down.
When that happened, one of the Wights, who had had some success with “medicinal” Sherwood offshoots during prohibition decided to come back to Cockeysville and build the Ryebrook brand.
The building is totally repurposed, as you can tell, and the painted surface that says “Home of Ryebrook” is barely visible at all anymore, but the words Cockeysville Distilling Company are still clearly visible.
I have to give a lot of credit to this website:
http://www.ellenjaye.com/maryland-menu.htm
which is amazingly descript and thoroughly researched. For more info on MD rye, be sure to check them out. I’ll also be on the look out for photographic proof of the remnants of the MD Rye industry.
Also of note: there was a Braddock brand rye too; obviously named after the man who so remarkably rode through the state on his way to Pennsylvania.
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