If not for a wave of state legislation in the past five years, the microdistillery boom may never have come to pass. The Corpse Reviver could have lain dormant well into the next century, Tom Collins preferring to spend his summer in less trendy climes.
Remember the blossoming of the brew pub and the craft brewing trend that left the United States with a surprising number of good options on grocery store shelves? American distilling is now on that edge and the gold rush is on, even if it’s wrapped in a ball of red tape.
While wild amounts of distilling and drinking happened in the United States before Prohibition, there were only a few dozen legal craft distilleries left in the country until just a few years ago. Now there are well over 200. As one micro-distillery-mad bartender once put it to me, “There are going to be thousands.”
Why the rush?
The times — and laws — they are a-changin’.
“In Nebraska, new laws permitting craft distilleries were passed in 2007 and the first one opened in 2009,” said Hobie Rupe, executive director of the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission, past president of the National Conference of State Liquor Administrators and a Johnny Carson fan. “We’ve got two here now, but if you want me to pull my Carnac the Magnificent, I think we’re going to see that number explode.”
Nationally, the microdistilling trend has worked its way in from the coasts, particularly west to east, but, as Rupe said, “It’s more than that. Now they’re popping up organically.”
The downside of the boom is that everyone with a shiny copper still can call themselves a master distiller.
“It’s going to make a schlocky product,” said Lance Winters, master distiller and owner of California’s St. George Spirits, a trailblazing distillery that first opened its doors in 1982. “I don’t want people to go out and taste that and have them stay away from craft distillers afterward.”
In an Alameda naval hangar, St. George now makes single malt whiskey, well-respected gin and an impressive absinthe verte.
The latter, released on the 2007 winter solstice, has a smell that fills the room and the palate with star anise, fennel and herb. Add an ice cube, give it a swirl and it achieves a dreamy, syrupy quality that peels away summer’s hot edge more effectively than pastis.
Despite being founded by German judge Jörg Rupf, St. George still battles through a labyrinth of state laws like most distillers across the country. The laws give rise to perplexing workarounds in order to keep the product on the market. To sell his own production at the distillery, Winters must first sell the bottles to a wholesaler 112 miles away, where they’re then sold to a retailer who leases space from St. George.
Though Rupf helped other micro-distilleries get rolling and fueled the current craft-distilling boom, Winters sees a lot of bad hootch out there and thinks the shakeout can’t happen soon enough.
What percentage of micro-distilleries are doing a good job?
“I’d say less than half,” said Winters. “Not even.”
He’s not alone.
“There is a lot of micro-distilled stuff out there that isn’t any good,” agreed bartender and drink historian St. John Frizell. “I’d always been hesitant about it. Distilling’s supposed to be something handed down from generation to generation, but I’ve found it’s not always the case.”
At his Fort Defiance bar in the Red Hook neighborhood, Frizell is the biggest on-premises account for the flagship product from the brand-new Breuckelen Distilling Company — something that could pass below a nose without alerting the drinker that it’s gin. With the hallmark tones of juniper almost invisible under unusual bready-yeasty and savory, small-leafed herb aromas, more familiar bearings only appear in the mouth.
“It’s really weird stuff, but it’s very pleasant, like a wheat eau-de-vie. You can really taste the base spirit,” Frizell said, noting that Breuckelen’s base spirit for their gin is made from wheat as opposed to many of the industry’s bigger guns that buy grain alcohol, then add botanicals.
“This guy is off on his own, mostly because I don’t think he knows what he’s doing, but as a result, he makes a completely unique spirit. It’s its own animal,” he said. “It’s disgusting in a gin and tonic or a martini, but it’s fantastic in something like a Corpse Reviver.”
Essentially, Frizell uses the gin’s quirks to compliment the Reviver’s other ingredients — lemon juice, Cointreau, Cocchi Americano (a fortified wine from Asti he uses to replace the traditional Lillet) and a spritz of absinthe. It will revive anyone in its path, corpse or no, leaving them with a boozy grin.
Frizell also got his hands on a few cases of Breuckelen’s not-on-the-market gin aged in bourbon barrels from King’s County Distillery in New York City, giving it notes of cream, nutmeg and vanilla. He puts this in his Tom Collins, made with lemon juice, and a homemade syrup made with lemon peels and sugar, creating a surreptitious lemonade that’s a clear tone, a perfect summer drink.
One of the best micro-distilleries to demonstrate the pros and cons of experimentation is the not-quite-3-year-old Corsair Artisan Distillery, with a pair of small distilleries in Bowling Green, Ky., and Nashville, Tenn.
Down here, the distilling classes will breezily stick micro-distilling’s boom and the mountains of red tape entailed in making it in the same sentence. Until recently, Tennessee allowed distilling in only three counties. That number is now up to 22, but before potential distillers can apply for state certification, they must go whole hog and commit to a signed lease.
Corsair takes full advantage of the flexibility that running a small number of tiny stills provides, a process rife with a fair share of misses.
“We can’t produce much, but we can play around with a lot of ideas and we can get stuff out there quickly. There’s tons of stuff the public will never see,” said Corsair head distiller Clay Smith. “We tried a blue corn bourbon when we opened. I don’t think it’s ever going to come out of the barrels. Maybe you could make a good salsa with it.”
Their experimental Chocolate Mocha Porter Whiskey smells, to this nose, of chocolate and Easy Cheese.
At the happier end of the spectrum, their Rasputin Hopped Whiskey, made with hops in the still and aged in charred oak barrels, is the perfect drink for India pale ale fans, bringing out the floral tones in the hops in a way beer can’t. Their Triple Smoke, now one of their biggest sellers, is made with three batches of malted barley. One-third of each batch is smoked in peat, another in cherrywood and another in beechwood, creating a slow-sipper and sort of Scottish double Dutch, reminiscent of Islay peat and gingerbread along with Highland spice.
The two spirits are worth every spray-cheese flop. “Triple Smoke?” said Smith with a proof’s-in-the-pudding tone. “Everything we’ve got in barrels is sold.”
Remember the blossoming of the brew pub and the craft brewing trend that left the United States with a surprising number of good options on grocery store shelves? American distilling is now on that edge and the gold rush is on, even if it’s wrapped in a ball of red tape.
While wild amounts of distilling and drinking happened in the United States before Prohibition, there were only a few dozen legal craft distilleries left in the country until just a few years ago. Now there are well over 200. As one micro-distillery-mad bartender once put it to me, “There are going to be thousands.”
Why the rush?
The times — and laws — they are a-changin’.
“In Nebraska, new laws permitting craft distilleries were passed in 2007 and the first one opened in 2009,” said Hobie Rupe, executive director of the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission, past president of the National Conference of State Liquor Administrators and a Johnny Carson fan. “We’ve got two here now, but if you want me to pull my Carnac the Magnificent, I think we’re going to see that number explode.”
Nationally, the microdistilling trend has worked its way in from the coasts, particularly west to east, but, as Rupe said, “It’s more than that. Now they’re popping up organically.”
The downside of the boom is that everyone with a shiny copper still can call themselves a master distiller.
“It’s going to make a schlocky product,” said Lance Winters, master distiller and owner of California’s St. George Spirits, a trailblazing distillery that first opened its doors in 1982. “I don’t want people to go out and taste that and have them stay away from craft distillers afterward.”
In an Alameda naval hangar, St. George now makes single malt whiskey, well-respected gin and an impressive absinthe verte.
The latter, released on the 2007 winter solstice, has a smell that fills the room and the palate with star anise, fennel and herb. Add an ice cube, give it a swirl and it achieves a dreamy, syrupy quality that peels away summer’s hot edge more effectively than pastis.
Despite being founded by German judge Jörg Rupf, St. George still battles through a labyrinth of state laws like most distillers across the country. The laws give rise to perplexing workarounds in order to keep the product on the market. To sell his own production at the distillery, Winters must first sell the bottles to a wholesaler 112 miles away, where they’re then sold to a retailer who leases space from St. George.
Though Rupf helped other micro-distilleries get rolling and fueled the current craft-distilling boom, Winters sees a lot of bad hootch out there and thinks the shakeout can’t happen soon enough.
What percentage of micro-distilleries are doing a good job?
“I’d say less than half,” said Winters. “Not even.”
He’s not alone.
“There is a lot of micro-distilled stuff out there that isn’t any good,” agreed bartender and drink historian St. John Frizell. “I’d always been hesitant about it. Distilling’s supposed to be something handed down from generation to generation, but I’ve found it’s not always the case.”
At his Fort Defiance bar in the Red Hook neighborhood, Frizell is the biggest on-premises account for the flagship product from the brand-new Breuckelen Distilling Company — something that could pass below a nose without alerting the drinker that it’s gin. With the hallmark tones of juniper almost invisible under unusual bready-yeasty and savory, small-leafed herb aromas, more familiar bearings only appear in the mouth.
“It’s really weird stuff, but it’s very pleasant, like a wheat eau-de-vie. You can really taste the base spirit,” Frizell said, noting that Breuckelen’s base spirit for their gin is made from wheat as opposed to many of the industry’s bigger guns that buy grain alcohol, then add botanicals.
“This guy is off on his own, mostly because I don’t think he knows what he’s doing, but as a result, he makes a completely unique spirit. It’s its own animal,” he said. “It’s disgusting in a gin and tonic or a martini, but it’s fantastic in something like a Corpse Reviver.”
Essentially, Frizell uses the gin’s quirks to compliment the Reviver’s other ingredients — lemon juice, Cointreau, Cocchi Americano (a fortified wine from Asti he uses to replace the traditional Lillet) and a spritz of absinthe. It will revive anyone in its path, corpse or no, leaving them with a boozy grin.
Frizell also got his hands on a few cases of Breuckelen’s not-on-the-market gin aged in bourbon barrels from King’s County Distillery in New York City, giving it notes of cream, nutmeg and vanilla. He puts this in his Tom Collins, made with lemon juice, and a homemade syrup made with lemon peels and sugar, creating a surreptitious lemonade that’s a clear tone, a perfect summer drink.
One of the best micro-distilleries to demonstrate the pros and cons of experimentation is the not-quite-3-year-old Corsair Artisan Distillery, with a pair of small distilleries in Bowling Green, Ky., and Nashville, Tenn.
Down here, the distilling classes will breezily stick micro-distilling’s boom and the mountains of red tape entailed in making it in the same sentence. Until recently, Tennessee allowed distilling in only three counties. That number is now up to 22, but before potential distillers can apply for state certification, they must go whole hog and commit to a signed lease.
Corsair takes full advantage of the flexibility that running a small number of tiny stills provides, a process rife with a fair share of misses.
“We can’t produce much, but we can play around with a lot of ideas and we can get stuff out there quickly. There’s tons of stuff the public will never see,” said Corsair head distiller Clay Smith. “We tried a blue corn bourbon when we opened. I don’t think it’s ever going to come out of the barrels. Maybe you could make a good salsa with it.”
Their experimental Chocolate Mocha Porter Whiskey smells, to this nose, of chocolate and Easy Cheese.
At the happier end of the spectrum, their Rasputin Hopped Whiskey, made with hops in the still and aged in charred oak barrels, is the perfect drink for India pale ale fans, bringing out the floral tones in the hops in a way beer can’t. Their Triple Smoke, now one of their biggest sellers, is made with three batches of malted barley. One-third of each batch is smoked in peat, another in cherrywood and another in beechwood, creating a slow-sipper and sort of Scottish double Dutch, reminiscent of Islay peat and gingerbread along with Highland spice.
The two spirits are worth every spray-cheese flop. “Triple Smoke?” said Smith with a proof’s-in-the-pudding tone. “Everything we’ve got in barrels is sold.”
