Inside the visitor’s center at Sagamore Spirit’s distillery in Baltimore Peninsula is a picture of a century-old spring house at Baltimore County’s Sagamore Farm. A caption says its water “creates a Maryland rye as revolutionary as America’s risk-takers and history makers.”

But for the past seven years, much of the rye Sagamore sells under its name has actually been made in Indiana.

Not anymore. At a party Saturday, the distillery is celebrating the release of Sagamore Small Batch Rye Whiskey, the brand’s first fully Maryland-made whiskey to be sold around the world. “This is what this product is going to be moving forward,” said Ryan Norwood, vice president of operations at Sagamore Spirit. “We are converting all of our products over to 100% made in Maryland.” Attendees will also be able to sample Sagamore Spirit’s Bottled in Bond, now aged to 7 years.

Because whiskey takes years to age, the distillery initially didn’t have any of the liquor to sell to consumers when Under Armour founder Kevin Plank opened the distillery in 2017. So Sagamore contracted with Midwest Grain Products to produce rye, bottling it in Maryland. For the past three years, though, Norwood said, Sagamore has been phasing out the MGP stock, blending it with product made in Maryland.

A lot of “non-whiskey” people don’t realize that Midwest Grain Products makes beverages for other brands, according to George Fotis, owner of Dundalk’s Drug City Liquor Store, which carries Sagamore products. “It’s all coming from the same place, it’s just got different labels,” he said. A 2018 article in Whisky Advocate called it an “open secret” that many supposedly craft distilleries actually just buy and bottle whiskey from the large Midwestern firm, often while waiting for their own stocks to mature.

“Honestly, it would have been cheaper for us to continue to pay somebody else to make whiskey for us,” Norwood said. “It was more challenging, it was more expensive to actually move and do everything here in Baltimore.”

Transitioning to a Maryland-made product is a major accomplishment for Sagamore since “whiskey’s as much the product as it is the story,” Fotis said. “Knowing that it’s from Maryland, at least to me, makes it taste better.”

About half the grain used to make the small-batch rye comes from the state, Norwood said. The water used to cook and ferment the rye comes from Baltimore City’s municipal system, while the water used to proof or cut the liquor comes from that historic spring house in Baltimore County. Earlier this year, Plank briefly listed, then unlisted the farm where the spring resides for sale. Norwood said he didn’t know what the future holds for the property, which also produces corn used in Sagamore rye.

The release of Sagamore Small Batch Rye Whiskey comes as Baltimore Peninsula, formerly known as Port Covington, has transformed from blank slate to burgeoning development. “It’s amazing to see how much it’s changed,” Norwood said of the surrounding area, built up largely by Plank and his partners. Clyde’s recently took over the neighboring Rye Street Tavern, building it into Baltimore’s largest restaurant. Under Armour will move its world headquarters there next week.

Last year, the parent company of Italy’s Disaronno liquor bought a majority stake in Sagamore Spirit and announced it, too, would move its headquarters to Baltimore Peninsula. Norwood said the new ownership group has helped them reach a more global audience at a time when younger Americans are drinking less and less.

One promising market is about as far away from Baltimore County as you can get. “We are seeing a ton of interest in Australia,” Norwood said. “They have a very big whiskey scene down there, and they’re really excited about our products.”