In June 2026, Swisher, Iowa’s Cedar Ridge Distillery unveiled its oldest whiskey to date, a release from Master Distiller and Master Blender Murphy Quint titled Nine & Three Quarters Rye Whiskey. At first glance, the name almost invites thoughts of Platform 9¾ from the Harry Potter series, the fictional gateway at London’s King’s Cross Station reserved for witches and wizards. Cedar Ridge has never made that connection, and the title is far more literal than literary. It simply reflects the age of the whiskey, with every barrel in the blend spending at least nine and three-quarter years in oak.
Even so, the comparison offers an interesting starting point. Platform 9¾ concealed something extraordinary behind an ordinary train station wall. Cedar Ridge has spent years doing something similar. While Kentucky garners most of the attention in American whiskey, this Iowa distillery has steadily built a reputation that deserves far more notice. And if anyone can be dubbed a “whiskey wizard,” Murphy Quint is a strong candidate.
Nine & Three Quarters traces its story back nearly a decade. The whiskey matured in barrels sourced from Independent Stave Co. with a #3 char, filled long before most of Cedar Ridge’s current rickhouses existed. As the distillery expanded, those barrels were relocated from one warehouse to another, growing alongside the operation itself…