The first time I tasted Sangaste rye bread was in Sangaste itself. It was the year 2010 and I was attending the dedication ceremony for the Aarne Viisimaa memorial plaque at his childhood home. Across the Atlantic Ocean in Canada, Canadian Gold Whisky was already famously associated with Sangaste rye from Estonia, but since I was not a whisky drinker at that time, it is fair to say that Sangaste rye bread in Sangaste would be my first encounter.
Why is Sangaste rye so celebrated? And why did Count Friedrich Georg Magnus von Berg (1845-1938), the Baltic German owner of Sangaste Manor, develop this award-winning strain of rye in 1875, several decades following the abolition of serfdom in Estonia?
