Pro cess aids f or higher ethanol yield and f erme nt ation consis ten c y.
Vi e w ou r e x t en s i v e o e r in g of c ra f t distilling inp u ts a t lallemandcraftdistilling.com.
36 Staving Off a Crisis
As demand continues to outpace barrel supply, distillers and cooperages ponder solutions.
BY JEFF CIOLETTI
46
42 Barrel Basics
An excerpt from “The ACSA Guide to Starting and Operating a Distillery” e-book
BY SYDNEY JONES46 MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
A Singular Legacy Family-owned Virginia Distillery Co. honors the past while creating innovative American single malt whisky.
BY JON PAGE
50
DISTILLING DESTINATIONS
The Natural State Craft spirits producers flourish and feel at home in Arkansas.
BY JOHN HOLL
RETAIL : ON - PREMISE
59
The Sipping Scene
Exploring the wide world of bars and tasting rooms
PACKAGING
60
Paper Trail
Is paperboard a viable new option for craft spirits bottles? Early signs are promising.
BY ANDREW KAPLAN
RAW MATERIALS
64
Breaking the Mold
A recent education session at Bar Convent Brooklyn helps distillers and bartenders decode koji.
BY JEFF CIOLETTISAFETY
66
Hollerhorn, Reborn
A founder of Hollerhorn Distilling shares lessons learned one year after a disastrous fire.
BY JON PAGE
PRODUCTION
68
Taking the Heat Out of Peat
Phil Steger, the founder of Brother Justus Whiskey Co., answers our burning questions about cold-peated whiskey.
BY JON PAGEDATA DISTILLED
72
Whiskey Growth Trends
CRAFT SPIRITS MAGAZINE
CEO, AMERICAN CRAFT SPIRITS ASSOCIATION | Margie A.S. Lehrman, margie@americancraftspirits.org
EDITOR IN CHIEF | Jeff Cioletti, jeff@americancraftspirits.org
SENIOR EDITOR | Jon Page, jon@americancraftspirits.org
ART DIRECTOR | Michelle Villas
MEDIA SALES REPRESENTATIVE | Annette Schnur, sales@americancraftspirits.org
CONTRIBUTORS | Lew Bryson, John Holl, Sydney Jones and Andrew Kaplan
AMERICAN CRAFT SPIRITS ASSOCIATION
IT STRATEGIST AND TECHNOLOGY IMPLEMENTATION MANAGER | Akshay Anikhindi, akshay@americancraftspirits.org
EDUCATION MANAGER | Kirstin Brooks, kirstin@americancraftspirits.org
DIRECTOR, MARKETING AND MEMBERSHIP | Anna Klainbaum, anna@americancraftspirits.org
ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT | Albab Melaku, albab@americancraftspirits.org
DIRECTOR OF MEETINGS & EVENTS | Stephanie Sadri, stephanie@americancraftspirits.org
ACSA ADVISORS
STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS | Alexandra S. Clough, GATHER PR LEGAL | Ryan Malkin, Malkin Law, P.A.
PUBLIC POLICY | Jim Hyland, The Pennsylvania Avenue Group STATE POLICY | Michael Walker, The Walker Group, LLC
ACSA BOARD OF DIRECTORS, 2022-2023
PRESIDENT | Gina Holman, J. Carver Distillery (MN)
VICE PRESIDENT | Kelly Woodcock, Westward Whiskey (OR)
SECRETARY/TREASURER | Jessica J. Lemmon, Cart/Horse Distilling (PA)
EAST
Jordan Cotton, Cotton & Reed (DC)
Becky Harris, Catoctin Creek Distilling Co. (VA)
Jessica J. Lemmon, Cart/Horse Distilling (PA)
Tom Potter, New York Distilling Co. (NY)
Colin Spoelman, Kings County Distillery (NY)
Jaime Windon, Windon Distilling Co. (MD)
EX OFFICIO
Thomas Jensen, New Liberty Distillery (PA)
CENTRAL & MOUNTAIN
Gina Holman, J. Carver Distillery (MN)
Colin Keegan, Santa Fe Spirits (NM)
Amber Pollock, Backwards Distilling Company (WY)
Mark A. Vierthaler, Whiskey Del Bac (AZ)
Thomas Williams, Delta Dirt Distillery (AR)
ACSA PAST PRESIDENTS
2020-2023 | Becky Harris, Catoctin Creek Distilling Co.
2018-2020 | Chris Montana, Du Nord Craft Spirits
2017-2018 | Mark Shilling, Genius Liquids/Big Thirst
2016-2017 | Paul Hletko, FEW Spirits
2014-2016 | Tom Mooney, House Spirits
CRAFT SPIRITS MAGAZINE EDITORIAL BOARD
PACIFIC
Lucy Farber, St. George Spirits (CA)
Jake Holshue, Spirit Works Distillery (CA)
Jeff Kanof, Copperworks Distilling Co. (WA)
Kelly Woodcock, Westward Whiskey (OR)
ACSA PAC
Jordan Cotton, Cotton & Reed (DC)
Lew Bryson, Alexandra Clough, Sly Cosmopoulos, Dr. Dawn Maskell, Teri Quimby
For advertising inquiries, please contact sales@americancraftspirits.org
For editorial inquiries or to send a news release, contact news@americancraftspirits.org
P.O. Box 470, Oakton, VA 22124
© 2023 CRAFT SPIRITS magazine is a publication of the American Craft Spirits Association.
One of the highlights of this year’s Bar Convent Brooklyn was a session titled “Remembrance of Drinks: Your Senses, Memory and the Proust Effect,” presented by Hood River Distillers/Clear Creek Distillery master distiller Joe O’Sullivan. It dealt primarily with sense memory and how the olfactory system is the star player in that regard.
“It begins at the olfactory bulb,” O’Sullivan told the audience. “It extends into your sinus, neurons come out of it, taking a chemical composition through the nose and the brain interprets it. … The olfactory bulb is the most primitive part of our sensory system. It’s why memories linger so long with smell.”
None of the other senses work that way and that’s why we have such a strong connection to past moments through our noses. We can visually remember moments and create a sort of rough mental composite image, but when we’re smelling a familiar scent from such moments, we’re immediately transported back there.
O’Sullivan’s presentation featured some cameos (via video) from a few familiar faces from our industry, including J. Carver Distillery founding partner and ACSA Board president Gina Holman, Copperworks Distilling Co. co-founder and president Jason Parker, St. George Spirits VP and head distillery Dave Smith, American Single Malt Whiskey Commission president Steve Hawley and Lost Lantern Whiskey co-founder Nora Ganley-Roper, who shared some of their own olfactory insights.
“When I’m tasting whiskey, a lot of times I pick up on this chalky fruit that reminds me of that dusty gum that came in baseball card packs,” Hawley offered.
Parker’s sense memory of choice was the smell of creosote, which was applied to the wood in his grandfather’s basement to prevent mold and rot. “I was too young to understand the concept of creosote” Parker said, “so I just thought of it as grandpa’s workshop.”
For Holman, any sort of barnyard aromas—while pungent for some—immediately transport her back to her grandfather’s farm, where she spent a significant amount of time in her childhood. “Think of a farmer and there is definitely the smell of a farmer,” Holman shared, “and some people would go, ‘Oh my gosh, what is that smell?’ and I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s
my grandpa.’”
Blueberry muffins, mixed with salty morning air is what transports Ganley-Roper. “I was sitting in the field with the early morning fog that’s rolling over me with that salt [smell],” Ganley-Roper recalled. “But also my grandmother, she made blueberry muffins … and I’d have the memory of this baking smell coming the other way.”
Pioneering cocktail luminary Dale DeGroff, who happened to be in the audience for the presentation, had his own sensory experience to share.
“When I was a Cub Scout, my grandfather took me to Fenway to see the Sox play the Yankees,” DeGroff remembered. “My grandfather smoked stogies and there was a smell of stale beer in the air. It was [Carl] Yastrzemski’s first year … it was my first baseball game. Fast-forward, I move to New York, I walked into a New York City bar and [there was] the smell of stale beer and cigars. Bam! That was it for me.”
Naturally, it’s all subjective.
“What’s meaningful to one person may not be meaningful with someone else,” Smith said. “What may be sort of a moment of high art for one person, may be a sense memory of candy to someone else.”
But capturing something that’s evocative of a spirits producer’s subjective sense memory is about as personal an expression of a distiller’s soul as one could get.
“At the end of the day,” Holman asserted, “[it’s about] we as distillers and those of us in this industry that love and are so passionate about telling stories.” ■
Jeff Cioletti Editor in Chief
Lew Bryson has been writing about beer and spirits full-time since 1995. He was the managing editor of Whisky Advocate from 1996 through 2015, where he also wrote the American Spirits column, and reviewed whiskeys. He is currently a Senior Drinks Writer for the Daily Beast, and also writes for WhiskeyWash.com, American Whiskey and Bourbon+. He is the author of “Tasting Whiskey” (Storey Publishing, 2014), a broad survey of the whiskeys of the world, their history and manufacture. He has also written four regional brewery guidebooks.
Sydney Jones has been distilling since 2016. She currently works as the head distiller for FEW Spirits in Evanston, Illinois, alongside an exceptional team, distilling world-class bourbon and rye whiskeys. She also specializes in gin production and spirits education.
John Holl is a journalist covering the beer industry. He’s the author of several books including “Drink Beer, Think Beer: Getting to the Bottom of Every Pint” and “The American Craft Beer Cookbook.” He is the co-host of the podcast Steal This Beer, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wine Enthusiast and more. John has lectured on the culture and history of beer and judged beer competitions around the world.
a variety of other food and beverage-related publications, and also newspapers. Follow him on Twitter @andrewkap.
ABE Equipment will drive cutting-edge innovations and industry-leading service to ensure entrepreneurs can maximize their opportunities to succeed. Our parent company is Norland International, a leading supplier of turn-key beverage equipment and more. abeequipment.com
ABM Equipment has been the leading provider of integrated grain handling solutions to craft distilling spaces for nearly 30 years. Their unique value proposition is “sturdy, creative layouts that are built to move and scale with your space.” abmequipment.com
Amoretti specializes in super concentrated natural infusions for artisan craft beverages. Amoretti sources the freshest and tastiest fruits, herbs, spices and more, paying attention to quality and consistency to ensure an impeccable, consistent brew in every barrel. amoretti.com
Fermentis is an agile and expanding company, dedicated to fermented beverages. It is a unit of Lesaffre Group, global key player in yeast for over 160 years. Our roots are strong while having an audacious spirit. As things happen during the fermentation … our goal is to discover them in terms of taste, flavor and pleasure. fermentis.com/en/
Malkin Law focuses on serving the needs of the alcohol beverage industry. We regularly assist with licensing, review of industry specific agreements, trade practices and navigating state laws. Malkin Law is also honored to be Legal Counsel for ACSA. malkinlawfirm.com
FIVE x 5 Solutions believes that distillery software should scale with you. We’re more than a service provider: we’re a committed partner in your distillery’s success and take pride in providing the most complete solution for your growing operation. We take your business as seriously as you do. Fx5solutions.com
The Barrel Mill is a familyowned cooperage specializing in premium white oak aging barrels, infusion spirals, and more. Our products are made from the finest materials we can find, hand-selected, hand-crafted, and aged to perfection. thebarrelmill.com
Glencairn Crystal is a leading manufacturer of bespoke crystal and glass. For over three decades, this family business, based in Scotland, has gained an international reputation for fine crystal and glassware. Best known for the creation of the Glencairn Glass, the official glass for whisky. glencairn.co.uk
Berlin Packaging, the only Hybrid Packaging Supplier® of plastic, glass and metal containers & closures, supplies billions of items annually, along with package design, financing, consulting, warehousing and logistics services. berlinpackaging.com
Harvest Hosts connects over 225,000 self-contained RVers to a network of thousands of small businesses (hosts). Hosts simply offer RVers a one-night stay on their property, and, in return, RVers patronize the business while spending the night. Our program is a cost-free opportunity and 100% of the money spent onsite goes straight to the Host. harvesthosts.com
At MGP, every step of creating a premium distilled bourbon, whiskey, rye, gin and vodka is guided by a passion bordering on obsession. We tirelessly collaborate with our partners, regardless of size, to develop and consistently produce the exact flavor profile that’s right for their brand. And for their discerning consumers. mgpingredients.com/distilled-spirits
The nation’s premier educational distillery, bringing together specialists from every facet of the industry to provide education, training and professional services to start-ups and existing companies. Moonshine University is housed next door to sister company Flavorman, an international custom beverage development company. moonshineuniversity.com
Park Street delivers productivityenhancing and cost-saving back-office solutions, advisory services, working capital, compliance management, export solution, integrated accounting and human resources management solutions. parkstreet.com
Saverglass provides for premium and super-premium spirits, still & sparkling wines and craft beers. Recognized for its innovation, its glass-making expertise and the quality of its glass, products and designs, Saverglass is the partner of choice. saverglass.com
Supercap has been producing closures for spirits since 1999. We are present in the United States with a great sales network with partners and agents, thus being able to help and advise you in the choice of the best stopper for your spirits. supercap.it
Tapì is an international group specializing in the design and production of miniature packaging design masterpieces. Our closures are based on cutting-edge functionality and technology, with an exclusive style that elegantly showcases each product. tapigroup.com
Thousand Oak Barrel Co. manufactures barrels to age and serve your spirits. All products offer a variety of options for customizing and branding with your personalized design. 1000oaksbarrel.com
The American Craft Spirits Association would like to thank all of our annual sponsors and our key supporters of education. We are grateful for all of your support throughout the year. Cheers!
Since 1876, we’ve been supplying the highest quality malts in the industry. We’ve distinguished ourselves by developing the most extensive line of specialty malts made by any malting company in the world. We provide everything from malts to pure malt extracts, brewers flakes and filtering aids. briess.com
As the craft distilling industry grows, BSG Distilling has been focused on supplying distillers with the best ingredients from around the world. Today, the craft distilling market trusts BSG Distilling to deliver the finest ingredients at competitive prices, without sacrificing customer service. bsgdistilling.com
Chevalier Casks is a distributor of high-end wine and whiskey casks and a broker of bulk spirits. chevaliercasks.com
CIE is a state-of-the-art, 75 million wine gallon, beverage and industrial graded, commercial scale, alcohol facility located in Marion, Indiana. CIE supplies pure and denatured alcohols to customers in the spirit, beauty, personal care, medical, food-flavor and industrial markets. cie.us
We’ve been in this industry for over 100 years, during which time we’ve learned a thing or two about what makes a great barrel to age great spirits. Partnering with distillers, we think outside the box to develop new products that push your vision forward. iscbarrels.com
ISTS
ISTS makes workplaces safer, employees ready and compliance uncomplicated. ISTS has extensive experience working with the spirits industry, so our programs are totally customized to address your site. istsky.com
Kason Corporation is the industryleading global spent grain processing equipment manufacturer that distilleries can count on for efficiency, cost savings and reducing waste and disposal costs. kason.com
The leader in supplying fermentation products and services to the distilled spirits industry, we specialize in the research, development, production, and marketing of yeast, yeast nutrients, enzymes, and bacteria. lallemanddistilling.com
Soderstrom Architects’ Ferar Wine & Spirits Studio has been involved in the design and master planning of more than 70 wineries and distilleries. Our studio was founded with a passion for design that conveys the special sense of place inherent in the site. sdra.com
Sovos ShipCompliant has been the leader in automated alcohol beverage compliance tools for more than 15 years, providing a full suite of cloudbased solutions to distilleries, wineries, breweries, cideries, importers, distributors and retailers. sovos.com/shipcompliant
Since 1984, Specific Mechanical Systems has handcrafted brewing and distilling systems for the craft beer and spirits industries, in addition to supplying various industries with complex processing equipment. specificmechanical.com
The Steric Systems PureSmooth process is a method of “polishing” distilled spirits to reduce alcohol burn, open up and balance flavors, and improve mouth feel. It works on both aged and unaged spirits. stericsystems.com
Signature Spirits, a division of Ultra Pure, is the leading independent supplier of bulk spirits in the U.S. and has the largest selection of alcohols stocked across its nine warehouses. We supply approximately 1,000 distilleries and brand owners with virtually every type of alcohol. ultrapure-usa.com
Whalen Insurance is a second-generation insurance agency owned and operated by Peter Whalen. He started a program for craft breweries in the mid 1980s and expanded to craft distilleries almost 10 years ago. It provides all property and liability coverages needed to safely operate a distillery. whaleninsurance.com
The Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) is the national trade association representing the wholesale tier of the wine and spirits industry. It is dedicated to advancing the interests and independence of wholesale distributors and brokers of wine and spirits. wswa.org
WV Great Barrel Co.
The best-performing whiskey barrel on the market, precision built in the heart of Appalachia. Infrared toast and controlled char standard on every barrel.
wvgbc.com/
For the first time, Copperworks Distilling Co. of Seattle has released a single cask whiskey matured in one of its own refilled casks. The first whiskey to mature in the cask was used to craft the award-winning distillery’s first-ever whiskey release in 2016: Release 001. Now, seven years later, this cask once again has something delicious to offer—the 131.2-proof American Single Malt Whiskey Single Cask No. 7-2.
J. Carver Distillery of Waconia, Minnesota, is pleased to announce the limited release of J. Carver 7 Year Runestone Straight Rye Whiskey. This exceptional whiskey embodies the unique flavors of Minnesota grains and barrels, showcasing the complexity of a carefully crafted, well-aged spirit. The 98.4-proof whiskey offers intriguing and complex flavors of butterscotch, nougat, sweet churned butter, honey, apple, cardamom, nectarine, dried stone fruit, dried orange peel, cocoa, oak, vanilla, white pepper, dill and baking spice notes with a long, well-balanced, soft and smooth finish.
In celebration of The Detroit News’ 150th anniversary this year, its newsroom leaders have partnered with Detroit City Distillery to produce a one-of-a-kind Single Barrel Bourbon Whiskey that nods to the city’s Prohibition history while fundraising for local charities. The 100-proof bourbon was aged for four years and three months and was hand-selected by distillery experts, newsroom leaders and the Detroit News restaurant critic Melody Baetens.
Frey Ranch Distillery of Fallon, Nevada, announced the release of a new permanent expression in its portfolio: the 124.3-proof Frey Ranch
Farm Strength Uncut
Bourbon. Bottled at cask strength, the new nonchill filtered, small batch whiskey is produced using 100% of the slow-grown grains that are grown, harvested, milled, distilled on the Frey Ranch farm year-round.
AB Biotek — with 30+ years of global experience supplying and collaborating with top distillers — now o ers Pinnacle Yeast, high quality, customized distillers yeast solutions backed by superior technical support. Learn more about Pinnacle Yeast by visiting abbiotek.com.
Now Available Through
abbiotek.com
Brush Creek Distillery of Saratoga, Wyoming, has unveiled its inaugural batch of Heroes Edition Straight Bourbon Whiskey. This 100-proof spirit is a wellmatured blend of crimson red, blue and white corn bourbon born and matured in Indiana, and further rested at Brush Creek along Wyoming’s majestic elevated western frontier.
Hinterhaus Distilling of Arnold, California, announced the release of its first foray into American single malt with the 92-proof American Single Malt Whiskey. It is distilled in small batches using thoughtfully sourced, high-quality California-grown barley of varying malt bills. Batch 1 is a limited release that features a blend of six malts from Northern California farms: Gallagher’s Best, Kilnsmith, Pacific Victor, California Spirit, Admiral’s Hearth and Midway. Each one was expertly malted by Admiral Maltings in Alameda, California.
Portland, Oregon-based 503 Distilling has released its newest craft cocktail in a can, Rhubarb Whiskey Smash. This satisfying summer beverage is a refreshing blend of smooth 503 Whiskey, rhubarb simple syrup and lemon. It is packaged in four-packs of 12-ounce cans, coming in at 11% ABV.
Portland, Oregonbased Freeland Spirits announced the release of Forest Gin. While the brand’s blue bottle Gin features the best of Oregon’s farm fields, the 90-proof Forest Gin gets its name and inspiration from Forest Park, one of the country’s largest urban forest reserves, just five blocks from Freeland’s distillery. All ingredients (e.g. chanterelle mushrooms, douglas fir tips, salal berries and nettle) are gently distilled via rotovap in order to preserve their freshness.
Holland, Michigan-based Thatcher’s Organic Artisan Spirits recently announced the release of four new liqueurs: Hibiscus, Mango, Peach and Watermelon. The small-batch liqueurs are each 30 proof and are all natural and certified organic, created using sustainably-farmed ingredients. The four new flavors expand Thatcher’s organic liqueur portfolio to nine products.
Columbus, Ohio-based Watershed Distillery announced the relaunch of Four Peel Strawberry Gin with expanded distribution. The 88-proof gin starts with the original citrus-forward Four Peel Gin and is then infused with sun ripened Ohio strawberries harvested at the peak of freshness. The pairing of red summer strawberries and crisp, bright citrus peels makes for an unparalleled cocktail or sipping experience.
Mamaroneck, New York-based Heimat New York unveiled its newest liqueur, Black Currant. Germanborn founder Ute Londrigan sourced the currants from the first commercial currant farm in New York, CurrantC in the Hudson Valley, to produce the 42-proof liqueur. It is now available at shops, bars, and restaurants in New York and New Jersey.
J.F. Haden’s Craft Liqueurs of Miami introduces 39-proof Key Lime Pie Liqueur, one of the first plant-based crème liqueurs on the market, capturing the essence of Florida’s iconic dessert. Crafted, distilled and bottled in Florida by Tropical Distillers, small batching ensures the highest quality and peak flavors in every bottle.
Benefits & Features
• Achieves a final moisture content of 50-60%
• Eliminates costly screen failures
• Models available range from small-batch craft distilleries up to large-scale production lines
• Stainless steel construction with food-grade finish
• Smaller footprint and optional caster wheels for mobility
• Adjustable tilt stand option for maximum dewatering
kason.com/spentgrain
Statesville, North Carolina-based Southern Distilling Co. is honoring two moonshining greats through its Legends Series, which includes 102-proof Bill Blair’s Moonshine and 95-proof Paw Paw Murphy’s Moonshine. “One of our goals at Southern Distilling is to restore North Carolina’s prominence in the spirits industry,” said co-founder Pete Barger. “Moonshining is an important piece of the state’s history and it is important to us to recognize that—and more importantly, to recognize the distillers who kept that tradition alive during Prohibition at no small risk to themselves. We’re honored to work with Bill Blair and Rick Murphy.”
Stone Ledge Spirits Co., located in Defiance, Missouri, announced the official release of its first premium vodka— InverXion Vodka. The 80-proof vodka is made with 100% sweet corn vodka, handcrafted in Missouri’s Ozark Highlands using all-natural, limestone-filtered water.
Eight Oaks Farm Distillery of New Tripoli, Pennsylvania, has now made its bottled-in-bond bourbon, Veterans Cut, available to purchase all year long. The first version of Veterans Cut, released in November 2020, sold out in less than five minutes. Eight Oaks then released a version for Memorial Day, and since that time has alternated between Veterans Day and Memorial Day, with funds going to support the Veterans Memorial at Ontelaunee Park. Going forward, fans can now enjoy Veterans Cut throughout the year, with proceeds supporting the Pennsylvania Veteran Farming Network.
Cotton & Reed of Washington, D.C., announced a shakeup to its core rum portfolio. The 65-proof Coconut Rum joins the core portfolio after a stellar limited-release career, and Mellow Gold tags out for the new 84-proof Gold Rum, a blend of oneplus year used bourbon barrel aged and threeplus year Amburana barrel aged rum.
Editors: Jeff Cioletti and Jon Page
Publisher: American Craft Spirits Association
Release Date: June 16
This peer-reviewed guide is a comprehensive compendium of expert insights detailing all of the tools and techniques that new distilleries need to get their businesses up and running and help ensure a prosperous future. In addition to serving as a textbook for craft spirits producers in their first one to three years in operation, it’s an invaluable resource for onboarding new members of a team, as well as a reference for existing staff to gain a more holistic view of how a distillery operates.
Author: Zachary Lamothe
Publisher: The History Press
Release Date: July 3
Boston has a long history with distilled spirits, from Colonial times through Prohibition. More recently, there has been a resurgence in the craft distilling industry from Cape Ann to Cape Cod. Regional standouts such as Boston Harbor Distillery, Bully Boy Distillers and Short Path Distillery have opened up a new era, with more than a dozen new businesses now on the scene. The author reveals the backstory of the popular craft spirit movement in the greater Boston area.
Author: Mike Gerrard
Publisher: Matt Holt
Release Date: July 11
This book tells the story of the unsung hero of the world of spirits, wine, and beer and an invention as ancient and important as the wheel—the humble barrel. Discover the barrel’s rich history, as well as the incredible skill and innovation that goes into producing your favorite drinks. The author investigates the making, buying and selling of barrels and details how drinks like wine, tequila, rum, cognac and others are enhanced by specific kinds of barrel production.
Authors: Joseph D. Solis
Publisher: Cider Mill Press
Release Date: Aug. 8
This is an elegant collection of more than 100 recipes inspired by the city of angels, Los Angeles. These signature drink recipes from L.A. hotspots pay homage to this dynamic city. With the recipes and dozens of profiles of bartenders, you can drink like a local whether you’re just visiting or entertaining at home. From iconic landmarks to old Hollywood classics and hidden gems, locals and tourists alike will discover new watering holes that are sure to satisfy all tastes.
New Riff Distilling founder, co-owner and chief executive officer Ken Lewis announced he plans to retire in the spring of 2024, coinciding with the Newport, Kentucky-based distillery’s 10th anniversary. After 50 years in the beverage alcohol industry, Ken’s impacts range from revolutionizing the beverage retail experience to changing Kentucky’s Sunday liquor sale policies to successfully lobbying for distilleries to sell their own products by the drink on their premises. A three-person leadership team—all current employees—will lead the distillery into its next phase. For more information, visit newriffdistilling.com
“From the beginning, New Riff has been about innovation—about trying new things, about growing and exploring what we could do in the whiskey space,” Ken said. “In that spirit, it is time for a new chapter at New Riff. Although it is hard for me to leave, I am excited to see what’s ahead and to celebrate the distillery’s successes in the future. I could not imagine a better group of people to take the helm and they are the reason I know it is the right time for me to step back.”
New Riff will be led by Hannah Lowen as chief executive officer, Mollie Lewis as president and Denny Gorman as chief operating officer. Hannah will transition from her role as vice president of operations.
Currently the company’s director of sales, Mollie will become the second generation to be
a part of the New Riff leadership team when she succeeds her father in his role as president. Denny is transitioning from director of engineering and logistics.
A part of the team since before the distillery opened, Hannah established New Riff’s operating systems, company branding and distillery programs as the company launched. For the past decade, she’s worked to shape the company’s mission, optimize operations and propel the company forward.
Mollie has served as sales director since the company’s founding, a perfect fit following time spent as an international export manager in Italy. Prior to that, she attended the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley and worked in different channels of the wine and spirits business from sommelier to distributor.
Denny, a professional engineer, joined the team in 2019 after more than a decade at The Boston Beer Company in Cincinnati, where he held roles in engineering, maintenance and project management.
Since opening in 2014, New Riff has seen continual, steady and intentional growth. The distillery is well-known for its commitment to Kentucky’s sour mash method and the bottledin-bond standard, which are used to produce award-winning whiskeys that are new riffs on an old tradition. Production and storage facilities have expanded in recent years, with a new barrel warehouse added this year and a
distillery expansion that increased production by 50% in 2021. New Riff has also increased its distribution, currently available at retail locations and via direct-to-consumer shipping in a total of 31 states.
The Newport distillery is undergoing additional renovations this year to improve the visitor experience, including a new gift shop and enlarging The Aquifer, the distillery’s cocktail and tasting bar.
Ken got his start in the spirits business essentially by accident. While working as a high school English teacher in Louisville, Kentucky, Ken’s father offered him the chance to turn around a small liquor store business for a year and then return to teaching. At 24, he began learning the industry from the bottom up and, more importantly, how to deal with and motivate people.
Ken saw what others did not: beverage alcohol retailing was ripe for innovation. While creating what would eventually become the Party Source, Ken created a store that looked like a bright and welcoming supermarket. He focused marketing around gatherings and parties, and devoted half the floor space to non-alcoholic products and fun, festive offerings like party supplies and gourmet foods. Combined with unbeatable prices, the approach was wildly successful and The Party Source (then known as “Liquor Outlet”) eventually expanded to six stores.
Catoctin Creek Distilling Co. of Purcellville, Virginia, has announced its donation of $5,180 to the Spirits Training Entrepreneurship Program for Under-represented Professionals (STEPUP Foundation). This donation is the result of Catoctin Creek’s successful #SipForEquality campaign, which ran throughout the month of March in honor of Women’s History Month.
The #SipForEquality program was an initiative designed to promote equality and equity within the spirits industry. For every bottle of Catoctin Creek sold and every cocktail tagged with #SipForEquality on social media during March, Catoctin Creek pledged to donate $1 to the STEPUP Foundation. With the support of its customers and distributors, the distillery is thrilled to have raised $5,180 to contribute to this important cause.
Furthermore, Catoctin Creek is delighted to announce that its Maryland/District of Columbia/Delaware distributor, Prestige Beverage Group, has generously pledged to match the donation for the results achieved in their
region. This collaboration between Catoctin Creek and Prestige Beverage Group amplifies the impact of their collective efforts, and the distillery commends Prestige’s commitment to fostering positive change within the craft spirits community.
The STEPUP Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization, is dedicated to promoting diversity within the alcoholic beverage industry. Through its comprehensive and immersive internship program, STEPUP provides underserved and under-represented individuals with the training, encouragement, and opportunities needed to enter the craft spirits community. By facilitating workplace diversity, STEPUP aims to address the industry’s lack of representation and increase talent from diverse backgrounds.
“We are honored to support the STEPUP Foundation and contribute to their efforts in creating a more inclusive and diverse craft spirits industry,” said Becky Harris, president & chief distiller of Catoctin Creek Distilling Company. “By partnering with
Prestige Beverage and collectively donating, we hope to make a meaningful difference in the lives of individuals seeking opportunities in our industry.”
To learn more about the STEPUP Foundation and its initiatives, please visit stepupinternship.org
Bloomington, Indiana-based Cardinal Spirits is offering its supporters an opportunity to invest in the distillery via a campaign on Wefunder.
“We’re at the point now where we have a community of over 40,000 fans on our newsletter and social media,” said co-founder Adam Quirk in a video announcing the campaign. “So as we take our next step here at
Cardinal Spirits, we want you to be a real part of our company.”
Fans of the distillery can invest for as little as $100.
“Historically we’ve raised two rounds of equity financing and both of those rounds were private,” said co-founder Jeff Wuslich. “About 20 people participated, investors that we knew.”
As of mid-July, the Wefunder campaign has raised more than $233,000 from 237 investors. The distillery is hoping to grow its canned cocktails, contract bottling and bourbon. And as Wuslich told Inside Indiana Business, it’s also about building a bigger fan base.
“We want to have more fans in the field,” Wuslich said. “We want people to go into their local bars or restaurant or their liquor store or their chain grocery store and say, ‘Are you carrying Cardinal Spirits? I really want it,’” he said. “And, you know, those bars and restaurants want to support what their customers want, and we hope that works beneficially for all parties involved.”
The owner of an NHL team has acquired Bently Heritage Estate Distillery in Minden, Nevada.
In late May, Foley Family Wines of Santa Rosa, California, announced its expansion into the spirits business with the acquisition. The deal includes Bently Heritage’s existing inventory of whiskey.
Bill Foley, the founder of Foley Family Wines, is also the owner of the Las Vegas Golden Knights, as well as several other sports teams and arenas. “I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished in Nevada,” Foley said in a press release, “and I’m looking forward to introducing our spirits to the marketplace.”
Christopher Bently opened Bently Heritage Estate Distillery in 2019, but it closed its doors in early 2022. The facility includes the distillery, housed in a 100-year-old creamery and a 100-year-old flour mill that are on the National Register of Historic Places.
“The Bently family, former owners of the distillery, restored these historic Minden sites to LEED Certification,” said Courtney Foley, second generation Vintner at FFW. “Their legacy is in perfect alignment with our family’s commitment to community and sustainability across our vineyards and winery properties.”
Foley Family Wines plans to produce spirits from locally sourced grains and offer its spirits through national wholesale markets and direct-to-consumer (DtC) channels.
“Foley Family Wines has been expanding our luxury portfolio of wines since 1996, and we are eager to launch a full range of high-end spirits,” said Shawn Schiffer, president. “As the demand for spirits
continues to grow and the consumer profile evolves, this is a strategic step for us. We look forward to integrating spirits brands into our national distribution network and to continuing the important vision of the Bently family.”
Marc Levit of ML Advisory served as exclusive financial advisor and Sheppard Mullin acted as legal transaction advisor to Bently Heritage Estate Distillery. Terms of the deal were not released.
London-based Distill Ventures announces the appointment of Heidi Dillon as chief executive. DV’s current chief executive, Frank Lampen, will continue to work in the business in his new role as founder and chair.
Since 2020, Dillon has successfully led DV’s US business, and as chief executive, she will build on her track record, keeping DV on the leading edge of emerging drinks trends and more.
Dillon has played a central role in building DV’s non-alcoholic drinks practice and has helped to shape perceptions of the segment, notably supporting the U.S. growth of non-alcoholic brand Seedlip, prior to it moving into the Diageo portfolio, and the launch of Ritual Zero Proof.
Dillon has also led the creation and launch of DV’s ‘Pre-Accelerator’ program, which seeks to improve access to seed funding for entrepreneurs from historically underrepresented communities. Fifteen brands have received investment from Diageo through this program since its inception in July 2021.
The leadership transition marks the next stage of DV’s growth story. Under Lampen’s leadership, the portfolio has expanded across highgrowth and disruptive categories and today employs more than 500 people across the United States, Japan, Europe and Australia.
DV’s partnership with Diageo celebrates its 10th anniversary this summer. To date, DV has facilitated five acquisitions by Diageo, including the original non-alcoholic distilled spirit Seedlip, Australian cold brew coffee liqueur Mr Black, Japanese rice whisky Kikori and German vermouth Belsazar.
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Ocean Organic Farm & Distillery in Kula, Maui, Hawaii, announces the appointment of industry veteran Jennifer Smith as senior vice president of sales and member of the executive leadership team.
Jennifer Smith takes on this new role after 25 years in sales and marketing, most recently as Ocean Organic Farm & Distillery’s national director of marketing since 2019. In that position she was connected to Ocean’s distribution channels and built excellent relationships with the sales teams as director of the brands where she implemented tactical plans across all U.S. markets at B2B and B2C levels to expand distribution.
Founder Shay Smith noted, “From our humble beginnings as a small family operation, Jennifer has contributed to many aspects of the business from helping to fill the first bottles of OCEAN Organic Vodka off of the line, to managing sales for the central U.S., to her most recent role as national director of marketing. Jennifer is not only a member of the founding family that brought this brand to life, but she has also been involved in all as-
pects of the organization since its inception. With her extensive background in sales and marketing, working with diverse domestic and international CPG organizations, the company is poised to benefit from her fresh thinking and creative perspective.”
Founded by Hawaii-born Shay Smith in 2006, Ocean Organic Farm & Distillery leads with its OCEAN Organic Vodka, a superpremium, sustainable vodka crafted in Hawaii using USDA-certified organic sugar cane and deep ocean mineral water. Nationally distributed, OCEAN Organic Vodka is made using ecofriendly and responsible production methods available from Earth-friendly raw materials.
“What initially began as an intriguing, yet long-shot concept discussed over drinks during pau hanas (happy hours) has now evolved into something remarkable—an award-winning vodka that has swiftly gained traction beyond our local islands to become one of the fastest growing super premium domestic brands on the market,” noted Jennifer Smith. “While the companies and products I’ve worked with have been notably diverse, they all share a common
thread—an environment filled with dynamic, dedicated individuals striving towards a shared goal. It’s an honor to work with a product and people that put our ocean and planet first, while earning critical acclaim for premium quality and taste. I am eagerly embracing this new role and the potential it holds for propelling our business to new heights.”
Samson & Surrey announces that Elayne Duff will join the company as Director of Brand Advocacy.
Duff brings more than 20 years of industry experience to a position most recently occupied by Kyle McHugh.
In her new role, Duff will oversee an advocacy team charged with continuing to grow Samson & Surrey’s diverse family of award-winning, premium craft spirits. The lineup spans from bartender darling Tequila Ocho and artisan mezcal brand Mezcal Vago, to Bluecoat, the original American dry gin; grain-to-glass producer FEW Spirits; Brenne French Single Malt Whisky; and Brooklyn whiskey maker and Samson & Surrey flagship, Widow Jane.
Says Samson & Surrey Co-Founder & COO Juan Rovira, “Elayne’s experience, vast knowledge and genuine appreciation for the brand ambassador role, make her uniquely qualified to lead Samson & Surrey Brand Advocacy and Education efforts, a critical component of how we build our brands.”
Duff’s entrepreneurial spirit led her to
found the “Beverage Brand Ambassador Academy,” a groundbreaking online training program for Brand Ambassadors that has been adopted by companies worldwide. She has spoken at industry trade shows around the world and has appeared countless times in print, digital, and broadcast media.
She also hosts the podcast “Celebrating the Brand Ambassador.” On the show she conducts candid, entertaining, behind-thescenes interviews with the best spirits brand ambassadors from around the world. She dives into their personal life stories, roles and responsibilities, the challenges of the position, best practices, and much more.
A natural marketer, cocktail program designer, public speaker, educator, and entrepreneur, Duff made history in 2006 as the first head mixologist and luxury spirits ambassador at Diageo U.S.A.
In 2015 she became a Global Manager at AB-Inbev ZX Ventures, where she developed educational and experiential strategies for the brand’s craft beers worldwide.
Said Duff, “I’m honored to build upon Kyle
McHugh’s legacy in establishing and nurturing an exceptional portfolio of brands and lead a first-class Advocacy Team. I am thrilled to continue his great work, drive our team to make a significant impact in the industry, and carry forward Samson & Surrey’s ambitious pursuit of crafting world famous premium spirits globally.”
Holland, Michigan-based Fogg Filler, a significant player in the design and manufacture of rotary filling systems for the liquids industry, has announced Dale Newton as the company’s new vice president and general manager.
Newton has a BS in electrical engineering from Purdue University and an MBA from the College of William & Mary. He joins Fogg from CPM Holdings, a company specializing in food process technology, where he held the position of global business unit leader & general manager of their thermal division. He brings over 25 years of experience within the global manufacturing industry and extensive tenure in leading business expansion and product management.
“I am confident that Dale will be a great leader for Fogg, with his collaborative and empowering style of management, helping take Fogg to new heights in filling, capping and process systems,” said Randy Uebler, senior vice president, ProMach Filling and Bottling Group.
Happy Raptor Distilling, a woman-owned New Orleans-based craft rum distillery, is proud to announce the expansion of its signature line of 504Syrups. The expansion includes the addition of two new varieties of 504Syrups –cucumber mint and lavender lemon peppercorn—as well as the increased availability of continental shipping throughout the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The expansion marks the first significant step forward in the awardwinning distillery’s production since Hurricane Ida in 2021.
“When Hurricane Ida hit Louisiana in August 2021, this project and many others went on hold so that we could focus on keeping our doors open,” said co-founder and chief brand officer Meagen Moreland-Taliancich, “Thanks to our community, we are here to tell the tale and we’re growing. While we can’t legally ship craft spirits in Louisiana, having the bandwidth to expand shipment of our non-alcoholic 504Syrups means sharing a piece of New Orleans and of our story with the world.”
As with all Happy Raptor Distilling products, the complete line of 504Syrups is locally handcrafted in the Crescent City from 100% Louisiana cane sugar and only whole, real ingredients. 504Syrups Cucumber Mint marks the company’s first fundraising product in partnership with Sprout NOLA, a New Orleans-based nonprofit organization that provides established and developing farmers in Louisiana with technical and social support. Inspired by the abundance of Sprout’s community gardens, 100% of the profits of 504Syrups Cucumber Mint will benefit Sprout through the end of 2023.
“Building an equitable food system is joyful
community building,” said Sprout Community Food Manager Mina Seck, “The fact that too many families lack access to basic necessities and fresh food is heartbreaking, but the community building and joy we experience in urban agriculture is immeasurable. In New Orleans, food is the heartbeat of our city and growing food is special part of it.”
As the summer heat approaches, Happy Raptor Distilling recommends 504Syrups Cucumber Mint and 504Syrups Lavender Lemon Peppercorn to jazz up a cold lemonade or iced coffee and tea, pour over a sorbet, shake into a cocktail or mocktail, or add a special touch to a baked treat. The new varieties join the popular existing 504Syrups Hibiscus and 504Syrups Praline.
Happy Raptor’s mission is to create premium rum inspired by New Orleans’ culture, community, and the moments that bring us joy. Since 2020, it has donated more than $40,000 in direct funds and in-kind goods and services to the New Orleans community, and now partners with over 100 nonprofit organizations every year.
Following a brief illness, Diageo CEO Sir Ivan Menezes passed away at the age of 63, the company announced in early June.
“This is an incredibly sad day,” said Diageo chairman Javier Ferrán. “Ivan was undoubtedly one of the finest leaders of his generation.”
Earlier this year, Diageo announced that Menezes would retire at the end of June and Debra Crew would be appointed CEO. However, days before the death of Menezes, the company announced that he was in the hospital receiving treatment for a stomach ulcer and that Crew was named interim CEO.
The following is an additional comment from Ferrán.
“Ivan was there at the creation of Diageo and over 25 years, shaped Diageo to become one of the best performing, most trusted and respected consumer companies. I saw first-hand his steadfast commitment to our people and to creating a culture that enabled everyone to thrive. He invested his time and energy in people at every level of the company and saw potential that others may have overlooked. This is one of many reasons why he was beloved by our employees, past and present.
“Ivan’s energy and his commitment to diversity created a truly inclusive business and enabled Diageo to have a positive impact on the communities we serve. His passion for our brands was second-to-none and in his heart, he remained the Johnnie Walker marketer from his early days. The desire to build the world’s best brands never left him.
“We are truly privileged to have had the opportunity to work alongside such a thoughtful and passionate colleague and friend—a true gentleman. He has built an extraordinary legacy.
“Ivan leaves behind many friends and a beloved family, and our thoughts are particularly with his wife, Shibani and his two children, Nikhil and Rohini. On behalf of the board, executive committee and all our employees, we extend our deepest sympathies to them.”
WHAT DOES HAVING A TRUSTED ADVISOR MEAN TO YOU?
"They honestly make us feel like we’re their only customer, and that’s just a tremendous value for me! Service is everything!"
~ Brent Brey Senior Maintenance Manager, Four Roses Distillery &
What do you drink at the end of the day?
Before you answer that … which end of the day? Is it the end of the working day? Or the end of dinner? Or the end of time with a partner, family or friends, and you’ve squeezed out half an hour by yourself to sort things out?
The ending, you see, depends on the story, and different people tell different stories And just like some people like happy endings, some people like something sweet at the end of the story.
For quite a few years, my favorite end-ofday sipper was Drambuie. It was soothing, a bit syrupy, but with a steel core of whiskey and a bright, happy streak of citrus. Lots of folks go to Bailey’s for something to round out their meal or smooth out their coffee.
There are so many different ways to a happy ending. The thing you have to ask yourself is this: Are you leaving money on the table by not having one in your portfolio … or not having enough?
Moonshine producers know what I’m talking about. From the tried-and-true “apple pie” to the ‘fruit in the fruit jar’ juicers, moonshine is all about flavors. As many eastern and midwestern vintners know, there’s always a ready market for sweet stuff.
Cream liqueurs are another easy sell. Put some time and money into making a good one; this is where a consultant would be a
smart spend, because a crap job won’t help. I’ve had a lot of craft distillers tell me about how successful their creams are, often with a grin of guilty pleasure. Don’t feel guilty, you’re making people happy!
Don’t limit yourself to a simple cream liqueur, either; there are other booze smoothie options. Eggnog is seasonally popular, and sells like mad in my home state of Pennsylvania. I’m still waiting for an American distiller to try the Dutch advocaat, a low-proof booze custard made with egg yolks, sugar and brandy (or GNS). It’s even eggier than eggnog, and a lot of fun.
In the right area, a limoncello can do well. Choose what direction you want to go, and don’t skimp. Remember, you’re a craft operation, take your time and get it right. Too many times I’ve tasted the bitter pith in the drink; not what you want. Aim for a balance of sugar and tart, bright lemon, without the bitter pith. (Sorry for the micromanaging; this is a pet peeve.)
Coffee liqueurs offer a range of possibilities. You can base it on brandy, or rum, or neutral spirit, or whiskey, but you want the coffee to come through cleanly. It’s like cooking with wine; don’t use coffee you wouldn’t want to drink. Just like coffee, you can go black, sweet or creamy.
There wouldn’t seem to be a lot of money in spirits like triple sec; they’re just mixers. Except
there are cognac-based beauties—you know them—that you can emulate for a much better drink, and a much better price. A better spirit, some cask aging, and you’ve got something you can offer as a luxury dream-inducer in the middle of the afternoon. Vive la différence!
The Italians are masters of the liqueur; amaretto and sambuca being the most popular, along with the aforementioned limoncello. Amaretto is not the only nut liqueur they make, though; there are cordials made with walnuts, hazelnuts, and pistachios. Nothing’s stopping you from trying native hickory nuts, pecans or pine nuts.
The Germans, as usual, don’t get enough credit for what they do. We’re talking about schnaps, with one ‘p’, a fruit or herbal liquor, usually with minimal sugar but a natural sweetness from the flavor of the fruit … or herbs, or mint, or roots and barks. I’ve had some pretty woodsy schnaps, and they’ve often been quite pleasant.
There are many other options. Fruit liqueurs—melon, peach, coconut—and sloe gin are waiting for you to make them special, respectable, delicious. Herbal liqueurs can work too, though you’ll have to find something forageable that your region will take to; recreating French Alpine liqueurs will be crazy difficult.
As always, I’m urging you to break out and do something different. Everyone’s making creams; try eggnog. Maybe someone’s already making limoncello; try limes, or grapefruit. If your area is known for an obscure fruit— gooseberries, ground cherries, mulberries— that’s an option.
Novelty and creativity are keys in craft distilling. That’s as true with dessert drinks as it is with the main courses … at the end of the day. ■
Lew Bryson has been writing about beer and spirits full-time since 1995. He is the author of “Tasting Whiskey” and “Whiskey Master Class.”
As always, I’m urging you to break out and do something different.
It’s that time of year when we ask you to either complete or share this with those within your distillery who best understand and have access to the state of the economics of running your business. The Craft Spirits Data Project (CSDP) is our annual evaluation of the health of the industry, brought to you in conjunction with our valued partner Park Street. The study results help us share your success and struggles with members of Congress, the media, financial institutions and guilds.
We need your help to know what economic health is today compared with last year.
Please complete this survey, which should take no more than 25 minutes if you have already gathered the appropriate documents before you begin the survey. As always, the information is reported out in the aggregate, so your privacy will be secure.
If you have questions, please contact ACSA’s CEO at margie@americancraftspirits.org
In June, we hosted a complimentary webinar about changes to California’s Beverage Container Recycling and Litter Reduction Act. Starting on Jan. 1, 2024, anyone who produces or sends beverage containers into the state of California will need to comply with new standards. Stacie Carder of CalRecycle offered guidance to help distillers navigate these news requirements, including details on the new beverage categories and beverage container materials; an overview of California Redemption Value (CRV) and processing fees; CA CRV labeling requirements; and how to register with the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle).
In case you missed it, all of our webinars are archived on our website and this one was complimentary to all. Most of our webinars are free to ACSA members ($59 each for non-members).
STEPUP (Spirits Training Entrepreneurship Program for Underrepresented Professionals) provides underserved and underrepresented individuals with hands-on training and education, encouragement and opportunities to enter the spirits community through a comprehensive internship program like no other in the alcohol beverage industry.
Working with distilleries and wholesalers throughout the United States, STEPUP provides a comprehensive, hands-on training program with a living stipend and provides job exposure for those of different races, color, national origins, abilities, genders and sexual orientations.
Do you want to help us diversify the spirits industry? Are you willing to open your doors to an inquisitive learner from an underrepresented community? Become a Host Distillery or Wholesaler!
Do you often listen to your friends and colleagues and offer advice? Are you a natural at providing encouragement? Become a Mentor!
Are you or do you know an underrepresented person who is passionate about the spirits industry, but doesn’t know where to start? Become an Intern!
If you or someone you know might be a good fit as an intern, mentor, host DSP or
wholesaler, please apply TODAY at stepupinternship.org
In early June, ACSA staff (joined by media sales consultant Annette Schnur and STEPUP Foundation executive assistant Sharli Ward) broke bread and savored a cocktail along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay at Herring Bay in Deale, Maryland. The retreat was themed “Efficient Exceptional Execution” and focused on why and how we, as staff, can better serve our community. A tour and tasting at Lyon Rum in St. Michael’s Maryland added both education and fun to the retreat.
In May, Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) introduced the USPS Shipping Equity Act (H.R. 3721) alongside Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) and eight original House co-sponsors. This legislation would end the Prohibition-era ban that prevents the United States Postal Service (USPS) from shipping alcoholic beverages to consumers and allow them to ship directly from licensed producers and retailers to consumers over the age of 21, in accordance with state and local laws at the delivery location. This bill is critical in leveling the playing field and increasing consumer and manufacturer choice while bringing in millions of dollars in revenue per year.
“We thank Representatives Newhouse and Wexton for their bipartisan legislation,” said ACSA CEO Margie A.S. Lehrman. “As our small, domestic businesses have grown over the past 15 years, allowing the USPS to ship craft spirits will provide access to another important delivery option for small distillers in the U.S. Many of those distilleries are located in rural areas where support of their local Main Street matters. Access to the 31,000 post offices in the U.S. would be a game changer, helping their small businesses to succeed and
grow. We hope the Congress will act soon on this important small business initiative.”
“While other carriers deliver alcoholic beverages directly to consumers, current law prohibits USPS from taking similar action,” said Rep. Newhouse. “Allowing USPS to deliver wine, beer and spirits produced across our great nation provides another option for shipping carriers. This is extremely beneficial to small craft breweries and locally owned wineries, especially in rural regions like Central Washington, who struggle to gain market access. The time has come for us to shatter these barriers and unlock the tremendous potential of the wine and alcoholic bever-
As part of our 10th anniversary celebration, we are thrilled to announce that our e-book, “The ACSA Guide to Starting and Operating a Distillery,” is now available!
The peer-reviewed guide is a comprehensive compendium of expert insights detailing all of the tools and techniques that new distilleries need to get their businesses up and running and help ensure a prosperous future.
The e-book also serves as:
A textbook for craft spirits producers in their first one to three years in operation
An invaluable resource for onboarding new members of your team
A reference for existing staff to gain a more holistic view of how a distillery operates ACSA members, please note that you must be logged in to our website to receive discounted pricing.
age industry. This crucial legislation has the potential to create opportunity for the wine, beer and spirits landscape, foster economic growth and empower consumers and businesses alike.”
“The outdated prohibition on shipping alcohol through the Postal Service is bad for consumers and bad for small businesses—imposing unnecessary costs and hassle,” said Rep. Wexton. “I’m proud to partner with Rep. Newhouse on this long-overdue, bipartisan reform to support local brewers, vineyards and distillers by improving their affordable shipping options and opening up access to new markets.”
Bar Convent Brooklyn returned for its fifth edition—the second at Brooklyn’s Industry City complex, home to artisanal creators of all stripes. The June event featured two days of international beverage alcohol brand sampling, education sessions covering everything from digital marketing to olfactory sensory memory, and visits to some nearby spirits production facilities. It’s quickly becoming one of the premier bar industry events in the U.S.
As demand continues to outpace barrel supply, distillers and cooperages ponder solutions.
BY JEFF CIOLETTI
At the beginning of 2022, the folks at Bluegrass Distillers confronted a scenario that had become a bit of an existential threat as the Lexington, Kentucky, craft spirits producer was scaling up.
“We were expanding radically and were told by the U.S. cooperages that they couldn’t meet our demand,” recalls Sam Rock, coowner of Bluegrass Distillers. “We’ve been in the industry since 2013, and we had bought barrels from almost everyone domestically. So I basically called everybody and everybody said no.”
Bluegrass was at a crossroads. It could either accept the reality that it had limited access to casks—and bring its expansion plans to a grinding halt—or find a creative solution to get its hands on barrels that had been out of reach. It chose the latter, helping alleviate its own barrel supply issues, as well as those of some of its fellow craft distillers, through the creation of Chevalier Casks, a distributor of high-end maturation containers that it procures from its cooperage partners overseas.
“We did a lot of legwork trying to source barrels from abroad for our own distillery and, in doing so, we forged relationships, and really partnerships, with some of the European cooperates specifically”, notes Ben Franzini, co-owner of Bluegrass Distillers and Chevalier Casks. “And through that, they said, ‘Hey, could you help us distribute,’ because we had said there are actually a lot of other distilleries, maybe not looking to scale as we are, but just looking for alternative sources for barrels. And so we said, ‘sure,’ and through that we’ve been able to help a lot of distilleries that are in a similar predicament.”
Chevalier may have been a relatively uncommon solution, but it was born out of necessity to deal with a barrel supply issue that unfortunately has, in the past year or so, become uncomfortably common among American craft producers with spirits maturation programs.
A number of factors, both acute and chronic, can be blamed as causes.
“I truly think it was a little bit of everything,” says Calen Kirkland, head of sales and marketing at cooperage The Barrel Mill. “Distilleries are going through a boom, kind of like craft brewers did 10, 20 years ago, where new distillers are popping up quite a bit, so that’s creating a demand on barrels. But then, also, there seem to have been labor shortages within a lot of different areas of the country.”
Loggers, he says, are retiring and not being replaced. And then there’s inflation, stemming from supply chain disruptions, driving up the cost
of virtually every type of production material.
Additionally, large legacy producers have been increasing production as well, which has soaked up a great deal of capacity. “You have the craft curve, but you have the expansion rates of some of these big guys,” says Franzini, “and when they expand, it’s monstrous.”
The Barrel Mill has been able to increase its production by about 20% in an effort to keep up with the surging demand, through a combination of operational changes that enabled more efficient barrel construction and contracting with additional loggers to boost its timber inventory.
Meanwhile, another supplier, Independent Stave Company (ISC) recently made a series of investments to grow its production capacity. In June, ISC announced that it is investing $30 million to construct a new stave mill through its subsidiary, American Stave Company, in Rickman, Tennessee. It will be ISC’s 11th mill in the U.S. The company also announced that it has agreed to purchase Brown-Forman’s stave mill in Clifton, Tennessee. And, in May, ISC closed on the purchase of 8,016 forested acres in Southcentral Kentucky.
Such operational enhancements certainly will help relieve some of the strain from the current crisis, but Dan Farber, founder and distiller at renowned brandy producer Osocalis Distillery in Soquel, California, argues that there are also historical factors at work that long predate the modern spirits industry and compound the effects of any immediate barrel supply conundrums.
“The fact of the matter is that the United States has never managed their forestry resources for stave wood,” Farber says.
And it’s not like forests were just blindsided by the proliferation of craft distilleries over the past decade and a half. “Wine uses American oak too, a lot of American oak,” Farber points out. “And they pay a lot more for it.”
Farber contrasts the American forestry situation with that of France—certainly no stranger to wine and spirits. Initially, it was a military imperative for the French, as they exerted much of their power on the seas and they needed timber for naval ships. “And that’s continued to the present day, where the French government still manages much of the national forest resources with an eye toward the wine industry,” he adds. “The wine industry is so important in France and obviously Cognac is a huge player, as well, so they always were managing their forestry resources with an eye toward use for cooperages. We
“It’s very much kind of been a perfect storm of conditions that have led to this and I don’t think that it’s going to abate any time soon.”
—Sydney Jones of FEW Spirits
just never did in this country.”
The prevailing attitude in the U.S. historically had been that we had vast resources and could harvest them for high-quality wood without a problem.
“But that’s come back to haunt us a little bit presently,” Farber says.
The fact that older white oak trees aren’t currently being replaced by younger white oak trees fast enough to support long-term sustainability. “It’s definitely not easily fixable,” Farber warns.
Remedying that has been a big part of the mission of the White Oak Initiative, a collaboration among industries (including cooperages and spirits producers), universities, state and federal agencies, private landowners, conservation organizations and trade associations. The main objective of the initiative is to foster the long-term sustainability of the country’s white oak forests, as the economic, social and environmental benefits that they provide. The collaboration is designed to help landowners to view their forestry resources as economic opportunities, and manage them
in such a way that they can take advantage of those opportunities—not the least of those being cooperage.
The results of such an extensive partnership aren’t likely to be visible for years, though, and not likely to impact the current supply issues, which flared up at a time when the industry had been dealing with supply chain volatility diminishing access to other critical items— most notably, bottles.
“It’s very much kind of been a perfect storm of conditions that have led to this and I don’t think that it’s going to abate any time soon,” says Sydney Jones, head distiller at FEW Spirits in Evanston, Illinois, who noted that her distillery really started to feel the cooperage crunch in the past year. FEW had, for years, consistently been buying from a single supplier, but had to add a second source because the preferred barrel maker didn’t have enough inventory to fulfill FEW’s demands. “And it was at no fault of their own,” Jones notes. “It was the Great Shortage. … We’ve been able to keep barrels flowing, but we’ve had to kind of diversify our portfolio.”
But even before FEW had to start sourcing from separate suppliers, Jones and her team were seeing the signs of the gathering storm elsewhere, particularly with the rapid acceleration in requests from the barrel brokers to which the distillery typically sells its used barrels.
“We felt an inkling of it just by having these constant phone calls and emails coming in from barrel brokers saying, ‘Hey, do you have this available? Do you have that available? We need it, we want it,’” Jones says. “We kind of felt that effect several years ago, but as far as us being able to procure barrels, we felt it about a year ago.”
Working with the products of two separate suppliers isn’t without a small learning curve, Jones notes, as the slightest differences in construction can create some minor operational headaches if those differences aren’t accounted for. “For example, we palletize our barrels and we found that the height of our [barrels from different suppliers] are ever-soslightly different,” she explains. “So now we have to palletize [them separately] because there is a slight height discrepancy.”
So, in order to build solid, safe pallet stacks, FEW can’t mix the pallets togethers.
“Things like that are mild inconveniences, but for someone who is strapped on space— if we were—that could have been a very frustrating thing to have to deal with,” Jones notes. “[Those are] just things we wouldn’t
have considered by blending two cooperages into our maturation program. … It’s the practical, everyday things, like how’s it going to age your whiskey, but also, how will you store it? Will it fit in your barrel rack? Will it fit in your space? Will you be able to move it with your forklift? These are things I wasn’t expecting when we got our [new] barrels in.”
If there’s one attribute craft spirits producers have in common, it’s an ability to be nimble and adapt under rapidly changing circumstances. In fact, diminished access to barrels can be a catalyst for renewed innovation. Jones likens it to solutions the general public had to find in times of rationing, either during war or economic downturns. “People got really creative and created some really amazing things just because the supply and demand was not ideal,” she says. “And I think distillers, especially on the craft side, we can be a little more creative, we can be a little more adventurous, because that’s honestly what is expected of craft distillers nowadays. I think you’re going to see some very interesting products coming out as a result of these shortages.”
That’s especially true since, these days, consumers are far more educated about what they’re drinking. They’re seeking out more niche categories. American single malt, for instance, wouldn’t be having the moment it’s enjoying without the interest from a more curious spirits-drinking population. And, unlike bourbon and American rye whiskey, single malt doesn’t require a new oak barrel. Scotch whisky makers—whose tradition was an obvious influence for the American single malt movement—commonly age in previously used casks.
“You couldn’t necessarily be as creative in your whiskey making 10 years ago and use used casks,” Jones contends. “I think now the consumer is a little more receptive and understanding of it and potentially very excited about it. They embrace the whimsy a little more, especially with the limited releases, so I am a big proponent of looking at used casks and utilizing them for alternative whiskeys.”
Re-charring is another option that’s fairly commonly employed for spirits whose stylistic definition doesn’t require new barrels. Jones expects it to become more broadly practiced in the coming years as distillers seek to get more mileage out of their existing casks. “There’s still a lot of life left in [re-charred barrels] and some coopers can offer that,” Jones says. “And I know that some distillers have figured out how to do it, just lightly scraping off that char layer
“As opposed to the commodity barrel that was all readily available for years, out of necessity, craft distillers are having to look at these more exotic cooperages, these wood species, and what we found that is that it then becomes a differentiator for their premium products.”
—Ben Franzini of Chevalier Casks
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and adding a little bit of flame.”
A distillery also may have to consider using casks of a different size than they typically use, depending on what’s readily available. As one would expect, 53-gallon barrels are in highest demand. Some may find it easier to get their hands on 30-gallon barrels.
“We’ve had a handful [of distillers] that have [gone to 30s], but it seems like the traditionalists want to stick with the 53s because that’s where their recipes are at and, with bigger distilleries, that’s where they get the best bang for their buck as far as production,” says the Barrel Mill’s Kirkland. “The [distilleries] that are more willing to shift are the smaller ones and the startups. We’re able to produce a very quality product within the 10s, the 15s, the 30s for a competitive price.”
FEW has been able to stick with its 53s, but Jones advises others they may have to opt for whatever sizes are available and adjust accordingly. “For craft producers, it may not be what is ideal, but getting your spirit aging is crucial,” she says. “You can’t just have new make sitting around in totes. So, at this point, it’s kind of along the lines of ‘deal with what you can get, make the most of it,’ and you might have to be a little more conscientious in your distilling.”
For instance, if you’re moving to a smaller barrel, Jones suggests, perhaps, making leaner cuts. Alternatively, you might consider distilling a different style for smaller barrels versus larger ones.
There are also barrel alternatives available, which can work well for spirits that aren’t required to age inside new oak casks.
“There are many cooperages out there who will sell you super-high-quality wood, either toasted or charred in other forms—meaning either sticks, small staves, pseudo staves chips, cubes—all kinds of forms and formats,” Farber notes. “It’s probably better in many cases than the wood that they were using in the barrels that they were buying—for a fraction of the price because it’s just so expensive to make a barrel.”
Contributing to that expense—apart from the costs associated with physically constructing a cask—is the fact that only a small percentage of a tree’s wood can be used to make staves. While the remaining wood is mostly of the same high stave quality, when a portion of it is knotted, that section is unusable for staves.
“If you put a knot in a three, four-foot section, it wipes out that whole piece for a stave,”
Farber explains. “But if you were to cut that knot out, the wood is exactly what you would use as a stave.”
As cooperages around the world have ramped up their sustainability practices, they’ve been able to get a lot more use out of their timber, charring or toasting those smaller pieces just as they would full-length staves.
The Barrel Mill is among the cooperages that offer such an alternative, in the form of its Infusion Spirals. The spirals are available in a number of varieties, including French Oak, American Northern White Oak and Eastern European Oak, at toast levels ranging from light to heavy.
“Sustainability on the wood side, we’re very aware of that, and that’s one of the advantages of our Infusion Spiral product,” Kirkland says. “It’s not necessarily for a bourbon manufacturer, because they need the new oak obviously, but folks that are producing other spirits, that’s where they’re taking advantage
of the spirals. They don’t necessarily have to spend the money on a freshly done barrel or spend the space in an already confined area.”
Promoting broader use of barrel alternatives, as well as used casks, is not without its challenges. The most significant of those is largely an educational one. Consumers, as Jones noted earlier, are far better informed about what they’re drinking than at any point in modern spirits consumption history. They might be more willing to explore the unfamiliar, but they also may have strong opinions about adhering to the orthodoxy of tradition and, possibly, a rigid view of what defines “quality”—especially if their introduction to whiskey and spirits in general was through bourbon. The unused oak requirement specific to that category may have led many to erroneously equate “new” with “better.”
That perception could shift, Farber says, if the craft spirits industry educates consumers on “the notion that, in fact, you can achieve
better quality by using re-coopered wood. It gives less-intense wood [character], which is a good thing. You could use used barrels, tailored to exactly the amount of oak that you want to put in and the type of oak.”
He argues that distillers can make much more complex spirits with such options, but there remains a misconception among consumers that it’s somehow a “cheat” or a workaround.
And because of that misconception, many distillers might be hesitant to make the legally required label changes to communicate these non-traditional means of maturation. However, as Farber points out, it doesn’t seem to have hurt one of the biggest names in American whiskey, which applies an alternate method for finishing. If you read the label of Maker’s 46, its description reads “Kentucky Bourbon Whisky Barrel Finished with Oak Staves.” For its French Oaked variant, the brand amends the verbiage to read, “Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky Barrel Finished with Ten French Virgin Oak Staves.”
But, in the end, if it’s new barrels that you
seek, they’re out there—but expect to pay more than you’re used to, Farber contends. “There are barrels available, but not at the cheap prices that our community has been mainlining for the past 30 years,” he says. Distillers may have to follow the lead of wine producers, which are far more accustomed to paying a premium for casks.
“A typical winery won’t balk at paying $400 for a barrel,” he says, “but the craft community grew up with circa $200 barrels and therein lies the rub.”
However, from that ‘rub,’ an opportunity could grow. That’s partly what the folks at Chevalier Casks have observed as they’ve fielded requests for containers from American craft distillers. “Some people are asking for Spanish oak, some people are asking for French oak—people want even Limousin oak,” reveals Chevalier’s Rock.
And that’s been something of a surprise for the distiller-turned-barrel-distributor.
“As opposed to the commodity barrel that was all readily available for years, out of necessity, craft distillers are having to look at these more exotic cooperages, these wood species, and what we found that is
that it then becomes a differentiator for their premium products,” adds Chevalier’s Franzini. “And, you know, it’s maybe a silver lining, out of necessity to be creative and look elsewhere, but it’s definitely a trend where people are [thinking] that if they’re going to pay more for a barrel, they want to make that something that differentiates their product, as opposed to just checking the box.” ■
“There are barrels available, but not at the cheap prices that our community has been mainlining for the past 30 years.”
—Dan Farber of Osocalis Distillery
As early as the 16th century, barrels have been used to contain alcohols for a myriad of reasons, many of which revolved around storage and shipping purposes. Barrels are remarkably easy to move and stack, watertight, and relatively simple to repair, making them an ideal and useful vessel for transportation. Nowadays, barrels are utilized as an invaluable tool for the improvement of a variety of distilled spirits, including whiskey, rum, tequila and brandy. The changes these alcohols undergo are chemical in nature, occur over time, and serve as an important— and for some matured spirits—dominant source of flavor. These barrel aromatics can be greatly influenced by a variety of factors, including, but not limited to: wood species, heat treatment, length of maturation, environmental factors and even the distillate itself. It is up to the distiller and/or blender to forecast the potential influence of these elements on their respective spirit. This chapter will discuss the different variables that affect maturation, in order to help future distillers establish a barrel recipe that best fits with their projected spirits.
In order to better understand the variables that drive flavor production during a spirit’s maturation, it is important to understand the anatomy and composition of the barrels themselves. A barrel is a deceptively simple vessel. At its most basic, a barrel is simply a wooden container composed of a series of slats which are bound together by the pressure exerted by metal hoops. Additionally, there are several key barrel features worth noting.
The standard size of an American whiskey barrel is 53 gallons (about 200 liters), but there is a wide variety of barrel sizes used around the world, both smaller and larger. Many craft distilleries, for example, have used smaller casks in their maturation programs, between 2 gallons to 30 gallons (7.6 liters to 113.5 liters), and barrel size can heavily impact an aging spirit’s trajectory. Barrels themselves are made of staves, which are slender pieces of wood that form the length of the cask. There are typically 31 to 33 staves in a 53-gallon barrel. These staves are curved into a cylindrical shape using heat and steam, and are held together by six metal hoops. There are two bilge hoops, which encompass the widest part of the barrel and are located closest to the barrel’s bung, which is the hole in the side of the cask where the barrel is filled and sealed and from where samples may be procured. The two head hoops hold the heads of the barrels in place, which are the perpendicular, flat ends of the barrel. The quarter hoops fit between the bilge and head hoops. Despite their watertight nature, barrels can be prone to leakages, which often occur near the stave joints, the places where the barrel staves fit together, and the croze, which is the space where the heads of the barrels are fitted against the staves. Barrels that have become too dry can cause the wood itself to shrink and compromise the pressure exerted by the hoops. Understanding barrel construction and weak points is important not only for potential barrel selection, but also in maintaining them as they age spirit.
Before the wooden staves are shaped into barrels, they go through a process called seasoning, which is a necessary preparatory
stage of barrel construction. There are two main ways that staves are seasoned: via air exposure and via kiln drying. Using the air exposure method, staves are stacked into tall columns and left outside for a period of time, during which they will be exposed to natural elements, including heat, cold, rain and snow. Air-seasoned staves will remain
outside between two to three years, and as such, the barrels they end up constructing tend to be more expensive. Kiln-seasoning is a process that attempts to achieve similar results, but in less time; staves go through a shorter air-seasoning period (around three to six months), before being moved to large, industrial-sized kilns for additional drying. The primary purpose of seasoning staves is to reduce moisture content, which helps prepare the wood for further coopering. However, a second, important reason associated with the practice of air-seasoning impacts future flavor production during maturation. Unlike kiln-dried staves, air-seasoned staves will develop microbiological ecosystems as they sit outdoors, which helps to break down excess tannin and “green” flavors in the wood that can possibly influence the aging spirit.
The inside of these barrels may then also be exposed to a series of heat treatments, some of which may result in a layer of charcoal that will provide a bulk of flavor compounds to
the maturing spirit. These heat treatments, known as charring and toasting, will vary in temperature and length of time, and can be dependent on a variety of factors, including the type of heat being used, the wood species itself, and the type of spirit that will be aged.
There are roughly 600 different species of oak worldwide, but not all of them can be utilized for barrel production. The most common species of oak used in the production of matured spirits are American white oak (Quercus alba) and French oak (Quercus robur and Quercus petraea). The use of other varieties—such as Japanese oak (Quercus mongolica, also known as Mizunara), and Oregon oak (Quercus garryana)—is beginning to grow in popularity as well. Before deciding on an oak or wood species for a cask, research should be conducted to ensure that the spirit in question falls under its relevant laws. As in the case of American bourbon
whiskey production, regulation stipulates charred new oak be the primary wood used in maturation. Furthermore, some other types of wood, such as the Brazilian species known as amburana, are environmentally-protected and may not be readily available due to restrictions on harvesting.
American white oak (Q. alba) is by far the most common oak used in barrel-making. Its harvest time is relatively quick, at about 80 years old, compared to French oak varieties (Q. petraea and Q. robur) that take anywhere from 100-150 years to fully mature. American oak grows in a wide variety of regions, elevations, soil types and climates, producing a wood that is both easily sawn and resistant to leakages once coopered. Generally speaking, French oak has a wider grain, and must be split by hand along that grain in order to be processed into staves. French oak harvests are also tightly regulated by the French government’s Office National de Forets (ONF) division, as Q.
robur and Q. petraea are both grown in geographically protected forests. Generally speaking, French oak barrels will cost significantly more than American oak barrels.
Regardless of varietal, oak shares similar structural traits across its species that make it an ideal material, not only for the construction of a leak-proof container, but also for the creation of important organic flavor molecules within the spirit itself. Carbohydrates (cellulose and hemicellulose), lignin (and its degradation byproducts), lactones and tannins are some of the crucial oak compounds that facilitate chemical change within the maturing alcohol.
Between 40 and 50% of an oak’s composition is made of cellulose, which are long chains of simple glucose units found in the cell walls that provide structure to the tree itself. Though it is non-reactive to alcohol, it does assist in the wood’s ability to hold liquid. Hemicellulose accounts for 20-25% and is a combination of several different types of simple sugars, as well as some polysaccharides, all of which produce chemical chains resulting in extractable aromatics once heated.
Lignin is another heat-reactive organic polymer responsible for flavor extractives. Once exposed to extreme heat, lignin will undergo a chemical decomposition, producing aromatics such as vanillin (vanilla), guaiacol (smoke) and eugenol (clove).
Lactones are part of a class of organic esters. There are two main types of lactones to consider in oak: cis-oak lactone, which produces coconut flavors, and trans-lactone, which is spicier. Depending on how many times a barrel is used to mature a spirit, the amount of lactones it is able to impart decreases, with the most lactones being available for extraction during a virgin barrel’s first use.
Finally, tannins are a polyphenol subset of compounds, and in spirits, are a precursor of bitterness, astringency and dryness. The highest rate of extraction occurs during the first six months of a spirit’s maturation, and, similarly to lactones, also will decrease in quantity with subsequent cask usage.
American oak (Q. alba) contains high percentages of wood lactones, far more so than French oak such as Q. robur and Q. petraea. It is oftentimes characterized by the sweet, highly aromatic vanilla notes it provides during maturation, especially if the cask is new virgin oak. Of the two most common French oaks, Q. robur is the most tannic, while Q. petraea is
somewhere in between Q. robur and Q. alba in terms of lactone and tannic content
Exposure to various levels of heat is a crucial element of most barrel production, as it is the mechanism responsible for many chemical reactions that produce flavors in a maturing spirit. Depending on the type of spirit the distiller is looking to produce, decisions regarding a barrel’s char and toast will hugely impact their final product. Heating a barrel will cause the wood’s carbohydrate components (cellulose and hemicellulose) and lignin to break down into what are known as wood extracts, which are aromatic compounds that will leach into the spirit as it matures within its cask. Different levels of heat can control the formation of these extracts and their subsequent presence within a spirit, and is the primary difference between toasting and charring. Depending on whether a barrel is being toasted or charred, and to what degree, a cooper may use a gas propane flame source, or use a natural furnace, fueled by leftover scraps of barrel wood.
Toasting is a common process that most barrels will be exposed to, even before a subsequent char layer is created, and produces a dark brown or red color in the wood. This mild heat exposure creates a gradient level of extractable compounds in the stave itself. There are three standard levels of toasting: light, medium and heavy, with some in-between gradients as well. Light toasting is the most common, especially in distilled spirits, and typically involves less time and less heat exposure and results in small color change. Commonly observed flavors that result from light toasting include caramel, vanilla and mild baking spices. Medium toasting ups the time and heat exposure a barrel will undergo, creating a darker wood color and more roasted flavor extractables. Heavy toasting is the most intense of three levels, and can border on the level of charring. Flavors produced here include coffee and intense spice. The heads of barrels, which encompass roughly 30% of a barrel’s surface area, can also be toasted to a different level than the barrel itself, allowing for great flexibility in creating a barrel recipe with a cooper.
Charring a barrel involves a much more concentrated exposure of heat, and creates a distinctive layer of charcoal on the inside of the barrel. There are four standard char levels, with Char 1 being the lightest and Char 4 being the heaviest. Char 1 barrels have been exposed to roughly 15 seconds of direct flame, and is most similar to a very heavy barrel toasting. Char 2 barrels are fired for around
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30 seconds, producing Maillard-like reactions that create more extractable caramel flavors. Char 3 is by far the most common and popular char utilized by coopers and distillers. The 35 seconds of open flame exposure introduces smoke characteristics to the aging spirit, as well as richer spice and vanilla. Char 4 is the second-most popular, and the most intense, with a 55-second burn that produces a rough, scaly effect in the char layer, oftentimes referred to as the alligator char. Barrels with this char level imbue heavy smoke aromatics into the spirit, as well as a deeper color.
Why incorporate both a char and a toast into the same barrel? Different heat exposures, at varying lengths of time and temperatures, will caramelize and degrade different organic compounds. Charring a barrel penetrates the stave upwards of 5mm, but as it ages, the spirit itself will travel as deep as 8mm into the wood. Charring a barrel post-toasting can provide an easier pathway for aging spirit to travel through the seasoned wood layer, overall increasing rates of extraction. ■
Sydney Jones has been distilling since 2016. She currently works as the head distiller for FEW Spirits in Evanston, Illinois, alongside an exceptional team, distilling world-class bourbon and rye whiskeys. She also specializes in gin production and spirits education.
Family-owned Virginia Distillery Co. honors the past while creating innovative American single malt whisky.
BY JON PAGE
George C. Moore never tasted a drop of American single malt whisky from the distillery he started in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Two years after diving headfirst into the project, the native Irishman died of a heart attack in 2013. But it’s easy to believe that George would be immensely proud of the spirits and the company he launched.
George’s wife, Angela, and son, Gareth H. Moore, inherited the vision for Lovingstonbased Virginia Distillery Co. and—with the help of revered consultants and a local team of passionate employees—have shaped it into a destination for American single malt whisky. The distillery claims it is the largest independently owned producer of American single malt and the most awarded single malt distillery in the country—it also won distillery of the year and whisky of the year honors at this year’s London Spirits Competition. It produces the Courage & Conviction line of American single malt whisky, which is distilled, matured and bottled on-site; the VHW series, which marries on-site whisky with aged Scotch; and a variety of single cask specialty offerings, some of which benefit charitable endeavors, including the Angela H. Moore Women In Distilling Scholarship that the distillery recently announced in concert with Appalachian State University.
The scholarship, which will provide $100,000 of aid for female students, is a point of pride for the Moores. “As a minority in a male-dominated industry, my goal is to grow representation and create opportunities for women in the production of world-class whiskies,” says Angela, who serves as the distillery’s board chair.
Gareth, the distillery’s CEO, says that the company has organically been a women-led business (his wife, Maggie, is also a part of the leadership team). Two of four full-time distillers and the entire bottling team are women. “We didn’t go out saying, ‘Hey, we need to have a female distilling team,’” says Gareth. “It was more of, we’re trying to find the best talent.”
Much of that talent has grown organically at the distillery, too. Several team members have risen from brand ambassadors to more prominent roles and lead blender Amanda Beckwith started as a guest experience manager.
“Being able to have people who are that passionate coming up from the ground up, taking on ownership is just really unique and a big credit to the Moore family for seeing that and empowering the team and having faith in
them,” says Beckwith.
Maybe that’s because Gareth grew into the role of a distillery CEO, himself. He has also served as the president of the Virginia Distillers Association and serves on the DISCUS Craft Advisory Council, but before his father’s death, Gareth was just a fan of whiskey. Although Gareth and his father were working together on multiple investments, the distillery was George’s passion project. “In my mind it was like, hey, that’s pretty cool. [But] my background is in technology and in finance, and so [there’s] not much I can add, except I’ll taste the whiskey from time to time,” recalls Gareth. “I had no idea about the industry, how it works.”
Weeks after George’s funeral in 2013, Angela asked Gareth to drive to the distillery to “see what your father was up to.” It was Gareth’s first visit, and he recalls seeing the shell of a building, minus doors and windows, with stills and tanks in place. He laughs when he recounts his thought process that day. “Being very, very naive at the time, it seemed to me like, hey, these are all the big pieces, right? You got a building, you got stills, let’s get a door and a window in here and press the on button. For better or worse, I was very naive.”
Two years passed before the stills turned
on and the distillery opened to the public, and it was another five years of aging before Virginia Distillery Co. released Courage & Conviction, which takes its name from a frequent saying by George: “Have the courage of your convictions.”
Developed under the tutelage of Dr. Jim Swan, the Courage & Conviction lineup features three core casks: bourbon, sherry and cuvée. The flagship offering has a target recipe of 50% bourbon cask, 25% sherry cask and 25% cuvée cask and is aged for a minimum of four years in what Beckwith calls “this incredibly dynamic climate” in Virginia.
“Our barrels have seen a high of 108 Fahrenheit and a low of negative four,” she says. “We often see 40 to 50 degree variances within 24 hours. So there’s a lot of interaction between whisky and barrel stave. That’s been huge. And then that humidity coming into play, not only is the alcohol evaporating at a pretty intense rate, sometimes from our barrels, the humidity pockets surrounding many of our barrels are pulling in water vapor. So we’re having a natural reduction in cask, which transforms my world all the time.”
The distillery also offers expressions of each cask and occasional special releases. The latest is Double Cask Reserve, aged a
minimum of five years, marrying bourbon and cuvée casks.
“I’ve increased the ABV a little bit, and I’ve made it a little bit of an older product,” says Beckwith. “I really love having older barrels to play with and more barrels to choose from.”
Another upcoming and highly anticipated release from Virginia Distillery Co. is a virtual education resource called the ASM Academy. It’s designed to teach enthusiasts, distributors, retailers and folks in the hospitality industry everything they need to know about the history, production and tasting of the growing category of American single malt. Consumer awareness is rising, and the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau has indicated that it will soon add a standard of identity for American single malt whisky. But both Gareth and Beckwith admit that educating consumers remains a slow battle.
“The idea is to start from the ground up,” says Beckwith. “Get distributor companies, get restaurants, so on-premises are aware and the bartenders are educators. And once you start getting that well of knowledge, I think a rising tide does float all ships, then eventually they’ll be a really good source of education all over. And not just from the distilleries making American single malts.” ■
“Our barrels have seen a high of 108 Fahrenheit and a low of negative four. We often see 40 to 50 degree variances within 24 hours. So there’s a lot of interaction between whisky and barrel stave.”
—Amanda Beckwith of Virginia Distillery Co.
BY JOHN HOLL
Arkansas might be far from the first state most folks think about when it comes to craft spirits, but the distilleries that call it home are making the most out of location, state laws and growing consumer interest.
“Arkansas is such a diverse state that it enables us to produce spirits with equal diversity,” says Thomas Williams, the head distiller of Delta Dirt Distillery in Helena. “Arkansas’s abundantly rich soil creates a unique opportunity to showcase the best of the best when it comes to value-added agricultural-based products.”
The state’s distilling offerings are diverse with bottles of sweet potato vodka, Prohibition-style moonshine, whiskey and brandy all produced and available. Williams, who was recently elected to the American Craft Spirits Association’s Board of Directors, says that bars willing to go all in on local products would be able “to stock their bars with spirits crafted only in Arkansas.”
While distilling in the state is still a little behind the brewing and winery industries, there are likely more distilleries on the horizon. This is thanks to a number of state laws that have been passed in recent years that are “some of the most advantageous laws for craft distillers,” says Phil Brandon, the head distiller at Rock Town Distillery in Little Rock.
“I personally wrote three of the laws and worked with the legislature to get them passed,” he notes. Among the laws include the ability for distilleries to sell to the public seven days a week without limit. Craft distilleries can sell by the drink and buy other
Phil Brandon of Rock Town Distilleryspirits to make cocktails at their locations. Craft distilleries can also sell beer and wine and can self-distribute up to 50,000 gallons annually.
Rock Town Distillery, founded in 2010, was the first legal distillery to open in the state. Brandon says he takes care to make sure that Arkansas is in every bottle from grain to glass, and in 2013 the distillery won a double gold for its house distilled, aged and bottled bourbon. Other international awards have followed, and Rock Town is now distributed to 16 states along with Canada and the United Kingdom.
“We were founded and still operate under the premise that we will source as much locally as we can and our spirits are all produced with grains from local farms,” says Brandon. “I believe since we make Arkansas Bourbon, we will always use Arkansas grains in the mash bill.”
That extends to the distillery’s expansion. To keep up with demand, in 2020 Rock Town partnered with Kentucky’s Bardstown Bourbon Company, which allows the Arkansas distillery to use its own recipes as well as state-grown grains. Working with Stratton Seed Co. in Stuttgart, Rock Town was able to send nearly 200,000 pounds of wheat and corn to Kentucky for production.
From the beginning, Brandon says he wanted to make an affordable spirit that could compete against any top-shelf competitor. The experience is on full display at the distillery’s tasting room with bottle pours, flights and cocktails that allow staff to show off their creativity and exhibit the diversity of the liquid.
Little Rock is where most visits might start an Arkansas journey, but venturing east has its rewards. About 100 miles east of Little Rock is the small city of Marvell, where music fans can visit the boyhood home of Levon Helm, and even see a bronze bust of The Band’s legendary singer and drummer.
Twenty miles further down the road is Helena, home to the family-run Delta Dirt Distillery. The distillery was co-founded by Harvey and Donna Williams, who serve as CEO and chief brand officer, respectively. Their children are an integral part of the business, as well. In addition to Thomas, eldest son Donavan is operations manager, and eldest child TaHara helps when she is on leave from the Navy.
While Helena may not be the first city that comes to mind for out-of-staters, Thomas says one of the goals of Delta Dirt, which creates spirits from ingredients grown on the
fourth-generation family farm, is to help revive the once bustling city. The distillery’s Sweet Blend Vodka captured Best of Vodka in ACSA’s 2022 Judging of Craft Spirits Competition.
“We want our first-time visitors to know they’ll be tasting spirits that have won some of the world’s highest industry awards possible,” he says. Delta Dirt has put a lot of effort into its tasting room space, which opened in 2021, and as a result it was the recipient of this year’s Henry Award for Arkansas Destination of the Year. “Equally important is that they’ll be visiting a distillery with a mission to ‘Raise Spirits in the Delta,’ by giving back to their local community,” adds Williams.
Community and tradition play a big part in other distilleries as well. In Hot Springs, a resort destination that enjoyed a Prohibitionera reputation for illegally made spirits, a new legal distillery is bringing part of the old ways to the modern era.
Crystal Ridge Distillery was founded by the Bradley family to “bring the tradition of moonshine distilling out of the woods and into the heart of downtown Hot Springs.”
Danny and Mary Bradley, along with son Asher, opened the distillery inside of a historic warehouse in the city that dates back to the early 1900s. It now serves as a destination where the curious can learn about history— Danny writes on the company site that his father had a brief time as an illegal moonshiner—and process.
In addition to moonshine the company also produces other spirits as well as a line of canned cocktails.
In the northwest part of the state Fox Trail Distillery is largely focusing on barrel-finished whiskeys. It also offers a vodka and a vapor infusion gin that the company says “embodies the wonders of the Ozarks.”
The Rogers-based distillery is also producing a cold brew coffee liqueur with local roaster Airship. The distillery says it is “sweetened with natural sugar in the raw and spiced with cassie, clove, and vanilla” and finished in bourbon barrels.
There is an intense focus on supporting local among all of the distilleries. It is as strong as a desire to showcase what the often-overlooked state has to offer to residents and outsiders.
“Not just Arkansans, but many Americans are elevating the importance of locally grown ingredients because knowing the source of their food and beverage is becoming as important as knowing its nutritional facts,” says Williams.
It’s time to give the Natural State a visit and to taste the bounty and spirit of the land. ■
Arkansas is such a diverse state that it enables us to produce spirits with equal diversity.”
—Thomas Williams of Delta Dirt DistilleryThe Williams family, clockwise from top left: Thomas, Harvey, TaHara, Donavan and Donna
Depending on whom you believe, the Southside is either a creation of 21 Club or South Side Sportmen’s Club on Long Island. Either way, Brooklyn, New York-based New York Distilling Co. recommends you join the club and sip one of these to beat the heat. The recipe from Punch was adapted for Perry’s Tot Gin.
Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces Perry’s Tot Gin
3/4 ounce lime juice
3/4 ounce simple syrup
6-8 mint leaves
1 dash orange bitters
Directions
In a cocktail shaker, muddle mint with simple syrup. Add all other ingredients with ice and shake until chilled. Double strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with a mint spring.
Drawing inspiration from the beloved Mai Tai, the Friend Place cocktail from San Francisco-based Brucato Amaro boasts a velvety texture and delicate floral notes, striking a perfect balance. It serves as an ideal companion for leisurely sipping during warm weather.
Ingredients
1 ounce Brucato Chaparral
1 ounce gin
3/4 ounce orgeat
1/2 ounce lemon juice
Directions
Shake all ingredients with ice. Strain over ice in an Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with lemon (or kumquats, if available).
Sycamore Flats from San Francisco-based Brucato Amaro is a delightful pre-dinner drink with a rich, full flavor. Its low alcohol content makes it an ideal choice ahead of a dinner with lots of red wine.
Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces Brucato Orchards
1 1/2 ounces amontillado sherry
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Directions
Stir all ingredients with ice and strain into a small cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon twist.
From District Made Spirits in Washington, D.C., this is a floral and herbaceous homage to the classic D.C. cocktail, the Rickey. District Made Ivy City Gin is elevated with a housemade lavender syrup, fresh lime juice, and soda, garnished with fresh rosemary.
Ingredients
2 ounces District Made Ivy City Gin
1/2 ounce lime juice
1/2 ounce lavender-rosemary simple syrup
4 ounces club soda
Directions
Shake gin, simple syrup and lime juice with ice. Strain into a Collins glass filled with ice, top with club soda, and garnish with rosemary sprig and dehydrated lime wheel.
This Negroni from St. Louis-based StilL 630 features the distillery’s Confluence American Gin. Built from a base of juniper and coriander, the spirit also includes horseradish, pink peppercorns and galangal root.
Ingredients
1 ounce StilL 630 Confluence American Gin
1 ounce rosso vermouth
1 ounce Aperol
1/4 teaspoon ponzu (citrus soy)
Directions
Stir all ingredients with ice. Strain over a large ice cube and garnish with an orange peel.
This cocktail was created this spring when Freeland Spirits of Portland, Oregon, relaunched its full cocktail program, which had not been back in full effect since March 2020. A balance of floral and bitter notes represent coming out of a long winter and into a fresh, new spring. The Freeland Gin can be subbed for Freeland Dry Gin.
Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces Freeland Gin
3/4 ounce St-Germain
3/4 ounce lime juice
1/4 ounce Cynar
Absinthe spritz
Directions
Shake all ingredients (except the absinthe) in a shaker tin with ice for eight to 10 seconds. Double strain over a large cube in a rocks glass. Spritz with absinthe two to four times.
This cocktail from Park City, Utahbased Alpine Distilling features AngeVert, an herbal liqueur—handcrafted by distiller Sara Sergent—that stimulates the senses, revealing a rare and mysterious depth of flavor. AngeVert is bitter, herbaceous, aromatic and invigorating. It also makes a great spritz and Last Word.
Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces Alpine Distilling
Elevated Gin
1 ounce Alpine Distilling AngeVert
1/4 ounce Alpine Distilling
Preserve Liqueur
Directions
Stir all liquid ingredients with ice. Strain into a chilled rocks glass filled with ice. Garnish with a lemon expression and sprig of basil.
The Scene: Slinky unassuming speakeasy gem
The Tip: Order the gin fizz, but be patient because it takes time to build the beauty.
The Vibe: Union Lodge No. 1 in Denver, Colorado was established in 2011 and quickly gained a reputation for its innovative and high-quality cocktails. The bar takes inspiration from the 19thcentury American traditional cocktail scene and brings back classic recipes with modern twists. The bar has a cozy and intimate vintage atmosphere with skilled and passionate craftsmen focusing on delivering cocktails based around fresh ingredients, house-made syrups and bitters and artisanal spirits. They have a meticulous approach to mixology with an emphasis on proper techniques and attention to detail. The bar offers a diverse range of handcrafted cocktails, both classics and original creations, but hands down my favorite was the Gin Fizz. It was a gorgeous delight and the perfect way to kick off a birthday celebration. The daiquiri was fresh and bright, an awesome ode to a classic.
—Stephanie SadriThe Scene: Musically enhanced cocktail bar with eclectic menu
The Tip: Order the One Love cocktail and make sure it comes in its signature mug
The Vibe: As you might remember from a couple of issues ago in our description of Bar Le Record in Montreal, vinyl record bars have become a subgenre unto themselves. While Bohemien Bar in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood doesn’t have as much of a wall-to-wall showcase of its licorice pizza collection as its distant Quebecois cousin—there’s a generous assortment next to the turntable behind the bar and another set on the shelf that dangles on a shelf that mimics the U-shape of the marble-top bar—it does celebrate the technology that delivers the vibrant sounds to our ears. A vast array of speakers decorate various corners of the venue and there’s even a tiny DJ cubby where visiting spinners can set up shop.
Many of the drinks themselves bear the names of classic tunes: Gold Dust Woman combines mezcal, Campari, sweet vermouth, mango and coconut; Imagine features bourbon, Carpano, Contratto aperitif and brown butter; Yesterday mixes gin, Salers aperitif, yuzu and tonic syrup; and One Love is more in the tiki vein with rum, passion fruit, pineapple, coconut, orange and turmeric.
The horseshoe bar seats 20 on its stools and there are a handful of cozy booths on the side, as well as banquettes in the front and back. It’s a comfortable place to chill and listen to anything from French Jazz to contemporary American pop.
Jeff Cioletti
Is paperboard a viable new option for craft spirits bottles? Early signs are promising.
BY ANDREW KAPLAN
Some craft distillers are switching to paperboard bottles that they say check all the boxes when it comes to sustainability, consumer appeal and in some cases, cost.
So far, two spirits companies, Distillery 98 in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, and Demon Spirits in Hudson, Wisconsin, have begun offering products in the Frugal Bottle, designed by a company in the U.K. called Frugalpac. The 750-mL Bordeaux-shaped bottle consists of 94% recycled paperboard that surrounds an internal PET pouch.
Both spirits companies say they really like that the paperboard portion is easily recyclable, with the inside pouch able to maintain long-term freshness of spirits without any degradation or negative impact on flavor.
“They brought a product to the table that was meant to have an indefinite shelf life as well as being a sustainable product,” says Harrison Holditch, Distillery 98 CEO. “And that just kind of hit everything that we were looking for. It passed every test for us, including durability—being able to withstand high proof alcohol, an 80-proof spirit like our vodka is.”
Both spirits companies also like that the entire paperboard surface, including its bottom, can be utilized to create eye-catching 360-degree bottle designs that really get their products noticed on store shelves. “For us the 360 graphics is an amazing thing,” says Demon Spirits co-owner Wayne Karls. “You can make quite an impact with that.”
Adds Frugalpac’s CEO Malcolm Waugh, “The consumer sees this amongst a sea of glass. This is a product that really stands out
on the shelf.”
Holditch says consumer acceptance of the new package during in-store samplings has so far been very positive. “We tell them they can take it down to the beach, or anywhere glass is not allowed and they kind of do a double-take and they’re like, ‘Wait, what?’” he says. “They pick the bottle up and they’re like ‘Whoa!’” Along with the beach, the product has also been popular with boaters, golfers and at local hotel pools.
Karls has observed some hesitancy
“They brought a product to the table that was meant to have an indefinite shelf life as well as being a sustainable product. And that just kind of hit everything that we were looking for.”
—Harrison Holditch of Distillery 98 on the Frugal Bottle
when consumers first encounter the bottle. “They’re like, ‘Are you kidding me? How’s that going to work?’” he says. But once they get over that initial surprise, they usually want to try it. “It’s been amazing. Everybody wants them,” he says.
A greener package?
Frugalpac says an independent life cycle analysis by Intertek found the Frugal Bottle has a carbon footprint up to six times (84%) lower than an empty glass bottle and more than a third less than a bottle made from 100% recycled plastic. The Frugal Bottle’s water footprint is also at least four times lower than glass, Frugalpac says.
Scott Cassel, CEO and founder of the Product Stewardship Institute (PSI), whose goal is to ensure products are responsibly managed from design to end of life, says it is too soon to say just how green a package paperboard bottles will end up being. “It has possibilities of greater sustainability,” he says. “I think this is a really interesting and innovative packaging design. I’d be willing to try it. But I would also check in with our state officials as to how this packaging compares to the glass packaging or dare we say a plastic package.”
Cassel continues, “I think we’re at a place where we need to be encouraging these kinds of design changes and thinking innovatively as this company has done about how they can reduce their carbon footprint, how to make the packaging more recyclable, and the sourcing as more sustainable.”
He also points out that paperboard bottles have the chance to benefit those distillers in states with extended producer responsibility laws. In those states producers pay fees based on the packaging they put into the market.
“The states, Oregon, Maine, California and Colorado, are now working through how they determine those fees,” he says. “They will be incentivized toward the packaging that ultimately is more sustainable.” Whether paperboard packaging like Frugal Bottle meets that criteria would have to be determined by each state.
When the consumer is finished drinking the beverage, information on the bottle explains how to separate the inside liner from the cardboard for recycling. The bottle is designed to pop open and the paperboard can be put into recycling and the plastic liner into the trash or recycling.
For now, Distillery 98 is importing the bottles from Europe, but plans are in the works to have the bottles manufactured in North America by as early as 2024,
something which would further cut down on their shipping carbon footprint. The Canadian packaging company KinsBrae bought the first Frugal Bottle Assembly Machine which will be operational in their facility in Cambridge, Ontario, soon.
For Holditch, the Frugal Bottle does away with worries about running up against shortages of glass bottles and metal cans. The bottles have also saved him thousands of dollars. When adding up the price of label, cork and the glass bottles it used to use, Distillery 98 was paying $6 or $7 per bottle. Today, using Frugal Bottle, the cost is roughly $2 total per bottle.
“Once we get it manufactured in the United States, we’re looking at a 60-cent bottle to a 40-cent bottle,” Holditch says. “For a smaller company like ours, our margins are so razorthin already that this has also helped us get a quality spirit down to a price of $24.99.”
The bottle can not only be easier on the wallet, but the back as well. The lighter weight can also have ergonomic advantages. “The pallets of paper bottles are easy to maneuver,” says Karls.
While the Frugal Pack has plenty of advantages, it doesn’t perform equally well to traditional glass bottles or cans in all environments.
For example, Holditch says any usage occasion with a lot of handling or wear and tear throughout the day can be a challenge. “Can it last in a cooler on ice in ice water all day long? I’m probably going to say no. Because at the end of the day it’s paperboard,” he says.
Also, the bottles require some adjustments on filling lines for processes like capping since the paperboard is weaker than glass. “It’s no biggie,” Holditch says. “And if something falls over, no harm no foul, that bottle is not going to shatter.”
Will Grassle of PSI also points out that while the Frugal Bottle appears to have major benefits on the sustainability front, there’s still that PET pouch inside. “The PET pouch must be separated and even if it is separated a lot of times the recycling processing facilities don’t have the capability to recycle PET pouches regardless,” he says.
The start of something big?
One company that is trying to do away with that plastic part entirely and come to market with a fully paper-based bottle is Pulpex. It is the result of a project that Diageo announced in 2020, calling it “the world’s first
ever 100% plastic free paper-based spirits bottle.” In the initial announcement, Diageo hoped that the first bottle with Johnnie Walker would debut in early 2021. According to Dave Lutkenhaus, global sustainability breakthrough innovation director at Diageo, Pulpex and Diageo are continuing to explore design and performance improvements prior to release. “We refuse to compromise on product and pack performance, so we’re working through the challenges we keep facing,” says Lutkenhaus. “One thing that hasn’t changed is our commitment to the more sustainable luxury packaging element, and for this to reflect what’s inside the bottle. As a result, we’re devoting additional time and doubling down on our commitment and investment across the science, consumer and technology space as we continue to test throughout 2023.”
Sky News reported in July that Pulpex has secured funding to produce a commercialscale production line capable of producing up to 12.5 million paper bottles annually at a facility in the U.K.
In the meantime, craft distillers like Holditch say from all the advantages he has experienced with the Frugal Bottle so far, he believes they will be an important option for craft spirits producers going forward. “I think you’re going to see a lot of this in our industry,” he predicts. ■
As the Japanese spirits shochu and awamori make a push for a broader audience in the United States, it’s always a good time for a refresher course on the one key ingredient that distinguishes them from all other categories: koji.
This summer’s Bar Convent Brooklyn offered just that in the form of the education session “Sweet as Sugar: Koji in Spirits and Cocktails,” presented by bar and restaurant consultant Don Lee and sponsored by the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association.
Koji is a mold that gets inoculated onto steamed rice, typically in a koji muro (koji room), which is kept at a sultry 95 degrees Fahrenheit to allow it to propagate all over the rice for about 48 hours. There are three basic varieties of koji, aspergillus oryzae (yellow koji), aspergillus awamori (black koji) and aspergillus kawachi (white koji). It’s the kawachi variant that is most commonly used in shochu (and you can probably guess which one is most common for awamori). Aspergillus oryzae, while used in some shochu, is the strain
most closely associated with sake making.
Koji serves a similar purpose that the barley malting process does: it releases the enzymes necessary to convert starch to sugar. In fact, koji can perform the same role on barley and there are some varieties of barley shochu that are 100% barley, meaning the only koji used is barley koji.
But there is considerably more to the story.
The rice that goes into the koji muro must be steamed to the point that the grain has about 75% moisture content. “It’s dryer than the rice you’re eating but it is hydrated all the way through to the center,” Lee says. “You want to have moisture in the center so that the koji spore will grow into the rice all the way to the center.”
In traditional koji making, the rice is spread out onto wooden trays. During the 48-hour period that the trays of inoculated rice are
in the koji muro, one member of the team has to enter the hot, humid space about four times to shake the trays to keep the koji circulating across the rice. And you don’t want too many other people getting in that room. It needs to be kept quite sterile to prevent other microorganisms from trying to get in on the action.
When making shochu, there are two different fermentations that are happening in parallel, in the same fermentation tank. While the koji is converting the starches, the yeast is turning the resulting sugars into starches. That’s not happening before those sugars are fermented, as is the case with malting. It’s happening in tandem.
If you’ve ever tasted koji rice, you’ll know that it’s decidedly sweet. But the other sensation that it’s got going for it that malted grains don’t is umami.
“The interesting thing about this is that this parallel fermentation does more than just break down sugars,” Lee notes.
Koji produces the enzyme acid protease, which breaks down protein into its component amino acids—among which is glutamic acid, the umami-promoting amino acid found in MSG. That’s a big reason why koji’s not only a common component in distilled spirits, as well as fermented beverages like sake, but also in culinary applications. “So the reason why koji is so important for making something like soy sauce and miso is not only that it not only produces the glutamic acid from the breakdown of proteins, but it also produces other amino acids that work in parallel with the glutamic acid to give you more umami sensation,” Lee says.
5. Not just a spirit ingredient, but a cocktail component, as well
With a large percentage of attendees at Bar Convent Brooklyn being bartenders, Lee wanted to make sure the audience knew
that not only should they be serving shochu and awamori in cocktails (not to mention neat or on the rocks), but they also can use koji itself as a cocktail ingredient. There’s a common Japanese non-alcoholic koji-based beverage, amazake, which is considered a health drink, that’s rich in vitamins and is often served after a meal. Mixologists can emulate the amazake experience by making an amazake-style syrup that could take the place of simple syrup in a cocktail. Basically, you’d want to combine koji rice with a starch (usually more rice, but you can also try barley or corn) and keep it heated at a constant temperature of around 60 to 65 degrees Celsius (around 140-149 degrees Fahrenheit) for 12 hours. The best option is to put it in a vacuum bag in a sous vide to maintain the temperature.
You can purchase koji at an Asian supermarket or even on Amazon. Really daring bartenders can conduct the whole rice-kojimaking process yourself, by buying the spores and inoculating the rice with it. “But let’s be
realistic, we’re all busy people,” Lee notes. “You can buy koji that has been fully grown for you. There are fresh versions that you’ll see in a Japanese market in a refrigerated area, probably next to the produce, or, if you don’t live near a Japanese market, you can buy a freeze-dried version on Amazon.”
One caveat is that 100% of the starch likely won’t be converted. “In a lab, you could convert 100%, but you’re not going to be able to hit 100% at home,” Lee explains.
There will be some cloudiness. The options are simple: either serve it cloudy or you could try to clarify it in a centrifuge (if one is available).
“You can also wait for it to settle out, or you can try to use other fining ingredients, such as magnesium citrate,” Lee suggests. “Depending on what you’re using, it will strip flavor out of the syrup. I say, just embrace the cloudiness.”
Not only will it bring the necessary sweetness to a cocktail, but it’ll also provide a nice hit of umami. ■
In the early hours after a devastating fire ravaged Naples, New York-based Hollerhorn Distilling, founders Karl and Melissa Neubauer were in a state of shock.
The overnight fire, caused by a short circuit in an appliance on May 12, 2022, destroyed most of the building that Karl designed and built himself. Only the production side—where Karl produces whiskey, gin, brandy and several spirits distilled from maple syrup—remained. The restaurant, run by Melissa, was completely destroyed by a blaze that 16 fire departments from four counties battled.
“I live about five miles south of the distillery, and coming down the hill you could see the glow, which was frightening,” says Karl. “And then to get on site, it was crazy. I’ve never seen so many fire trucks and I don’t think they had ever seen a fire that big in Naples.”
The decision to rebuild was partially bolstered by friends, family and the local community. There was a GoFundMe campaign that raised more than $50,000 and an outpouring of support, offers to donate salvaged timbers and more. “The amount of community support and well wishes and people just coming out of the woodwork was … it definitely chokes me
up when I think about it,” recalls Karl.
More than a year after the fire, the grueling rebuilding process is nearly complete. This spring, Hollerhon introduced the Phoenix Series, consisting of special releases of spirits that survived the fire. In May, the distillery opened a small tasting room dubbed The Remedy Room where patrons can purchase spirits from Hollerhorn, including a collaboration gin with Black Button Distilling, as well as occasional spirits from other New York-based distilleries. In June, Karl started distilling on site again, and Hollerhorn hosted its first concert on its outdoor stage since the fire. By the end of this summer, the Neubauers hope to reopen their restaurant and tasting room.
The road to reopening has been a stressful journey filled with some sleepless nights and seven-day work weeks. “But then there are days where I step back and realize, okay, we’re making progress,” says Karl. “It’s a lot better than it was a year ago when we were looking at a pile of just debris and rubble and ash. Now we’ve got a functioning space again, which is huge.”
An overbuilt firewall is largely to thank for saving the production side of Hollerhorn. In addition to being thicker than most walls, Karl
used fire resistant sheetrock and fire resistant insulation: Comfortbatt from Rockwool. When the Neubauers arrived at the fire, Karl says it was clear that the retail side of the building was a loss, so they asked the fire fighters to focus on saving the production side, which also included a barrel warehouse.
“It literally held for over six hours, which is kind of incredible,” says Karl. “Even the firefighters, they’d never seen anything like it. … The insulation would not burn. After the fire, we took batts of that insulation out completely intact. So I’m sold on it in rebuilding. I have fireseparated everything and all of the insulation in the entire building is fire resistant.”
Karl is also a proponent of fire-rated glass. “That should be mandatory in most codes, but codes vary,” he says. “It’s expensive, but had we not done that … then we would’ve been in a whole different situation right now and lost years of barrel aging and distilling.”
In the rebuild, the Neubauers also upgraded their fire detection service. At the start of the fire, the previous service detected motion and left a message on the Neubauers’s landline and dispatched a sheriff rather than a fire department.
“Now we have a separate fire detection [service for] heat, smoke, CO2,” says Karl. “We have a brain in a computer that’s monitoring the entire building for that end of things, has nothing to do with our security system and our camera system. And it’ll call the fire department directly, which we couldn’t do the first time around.”
In a final piece of advice for fellow craft spirits producers, Karl warns not to skimp on insurance. Hollerhorn uses a local insurance company that is steeped in the alcohol industry. “I had a really good agent that said, ‘Hey, don’t skimp on that. Don’t do this. Have some business interruption insurance in place. Make sure you’re covered.’ I took that advice and thank goodness.” ■
“The amount of community support and well wishes and people just coming out of the woodwork was … it definitely chokes me up when I think about it.”
—Karl Neubauer of Hollerhorn DistillingA release from Hollerhorn’s Phoenix Series Melissa and Karl Neubauer Inspecting the fire scene in May of 2022 Signs of support after the fire
Minnesota is known as the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but Minneapolis-based Brother Justus Whiskey Co. is staking its future on the state’s peatlands. To capture the essence of this ancient ingredient, the distillery created the Aitkin County Process to make coldpeated whiskey. Rather than burning peat to smoke malt, the process combines the whiskey with peat after barrel aging, allowing the true taste of peat to shine in the distillery’s Cold-Peated American Single Malt Whiskey.
To help us better understand the process and its results, Brother Justus founder Phil Steger answered some of our questions.
CRAFT SPIRITS: When did your fascination with peat begin?
Phil Steger: Wandering the moors and boglands of northern England as a high school student, and grooming ski trails through the muskeg and boglands of northern Minnesota as a college student.
Is it true that working with Minnesota peat is part of what motivated you to start the distillery?
100%. Minnesota is one of the only, if not only, states that produces every ingredient for single malt whiskey—water, malted barley (the largest malthouse in the Western Hemisphere is in Minnesota), native white oak forests for barrels—and peat. Minnesota has 6 million acres of peatlands, more than Scotland and Ireland, that formed in the
footprints of ancient glaciers. They still contain the cells of every reed, sedge and moss bed grown there since the Ice Age, when wooly mammoths walked the earth. I needed to know what all that time tasted like. If it was just water, grain and oak, I wouldn’t have done it. There are too many other great American whiskey distilleries using those ingredients, including peat-smoked malt, whether imported from the U.K. or produced domestically. It was the peat itself, of finding a way to put its true flavors and identity into the glass, that drove me forward.
In a nutshell, can you explain how the cold-peated process works?
Instead of burning peat to smoke the malt, sending 10,000 years of accumulated carbon into the atmosphere, our process infuses the whiskey with solid, whole peat after barrelaging. We call it the Aitkin County Process in homage to the Lincoln County Process associated with Tennessee whiskey and to the Minnesota county our peat is sourced from and the people who make it possible. We call the resulting product Cold-Peated whiskey.
What effect does the process have on the finished product in terms of taste, aroma, etc?
It’s extraordinary. People think they know what peat tastes like, but they only know what peat smoke tastes like. Ours is the first—and, for now, only—whiskey that tastes like peat. It’s deep, subtle, rich, with earthy, mushroom, dark chocolate and nori-like flavors. It’s not medicinal or briny, but more subtly saline.
How much peat do you use?
Very little, compared to traditional peatsmoking. This is because we incorporate the peat into the very end of the process, between barreling and bottling, where it makes the biggest impact, rather than at the very beginning of the process.
“It was the peat itself, of finding a way to put its true flavors and identity into the glass, that drove me forward.”
—Phil Steger
How/where did this idea come about? Is there a person/group that’s to credit for it? The idea is mine, but it wouldn’t be possible without our partners at American Peat Technology in Aitkin, Minnesota. I was going to be the first distiller to use Minnesota peat in whiskey. I felt the responsibility of that. Did I want to import a destructive traditional methodology, which has valid historical and cultural context in its own place of origin, to this land? I didn’t believe I had the right. Plus, my motivation was to connect to this land’s history and story through taste.
The traditional way sets that 10,000-year history on fire and reduces its flavors to smoke and ash, literally. I thought there must be a way to infuse whiskey with whole peat so the carbon could stay solid and go back into the ground, but I would need the expertise of people who know this incredible material better than I to do it. So I cold-called every peat producer in Minnesota to see what they had. Only American Peat was working with peat in ways and for uses that could work for whiskey.
There’s a patent pending on the process–how far along is that? Is the idea that you’d be the only distillery that can use
this process?
The patents are somewhere in the middle of their journey. The whole point of filing the patents is to share our methodologies with the world, rather than guard them as trade secrets, so that everyone who wants to can use the Aitkin County Process and make Cold-Peated whiskey.
Overall, what do you think the future holds for cold-peated whiskey?
I think it will enable the traditional ingredient of ancient peat to be a part of modern whiskey and become the primary way peat is used, because it solves traditional peat-smoked whiskey’s serious environmental problem at the source. I also think it will become the IPA of craft whiskey. They’re similar because they’re both made by a finishing infusion of a natural, traditional ingredient—peat in whiskey, hops in IPA. Small producers will be able to experiment at very low cost in small volumes to develop distinctive expressions and scale up the winners. This will drive innovation and the development of individual, local, regional, national and even international flavors and styles that whiskey lovers and casual consumers alike will flock toward. ■
Quench your thirst for knowledge in ACSA’s Craft Spirits Classroom.
For more information or to register, visit our website at https://americancraftspirits.org/education/webinars.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
If you recall in the last issue’s edition of Data Distilled, we talked about how many broader, macroeconomic issues—inflation, high interest rates, banking crises from earlier this year—were weighing on consumer spending to the point that it was having an impact on the growth rates in the agave spirits category (and spirits overall). And that was coupled with the fact that throughout the heavily impacted covid years and the beginning of 2022, growth rates were uncharacteristically (and unsustainably) high, due to stay-athome consumers using much of the money they were saving from not going out to treat themselves with spirits purchases.
Unsurprisingly, those same factors have exerted similar pressures on another topperforming category: whiskey. Again, the big caveat here is that there’s a perfect storm of largely temporary factors influencing spirits volume and it’s important to view any category in relation to multi-year trends.
In the 12-month period that ended May 2023,
volume for the total whiskey category was down 4.4% versus the same period the previous year, according to SipSource, the industry’s only data source based on aggregated wine and spirits distributor depletion data. That contrasts with a total category increase of 2.1% for the 12-month period that ended May 2022. American whiskey fared slightly better, down 2.3% for the 12-month stretch that ended May 2023. But for the year that ended May 2022, total American whiskey was up 2.6%.
Even whiskeys priced at $25 and above were down nearly 3%, versus an increase of nearly 7% the year before. But it’s largely imports that are weighing down the higherpriced tier, as volume for American whiskeys with a price tag of $25 or more were still in positive territory, up 1.3%, versus 9% for the 12-month period immediately preceding it. Bourbon is a volume growth driver for $25+ American whiskey, increasing by 2.3%. U.S. Flavored whiskeys $25 and up grew significantly by 15.9%.
As far as the total spirits category is concerned, the declines appear to be across the board. Total spirits volume for the 12 months that ended May 2023 experienced a seemingly modest decline of 0.8%. But, RTDs are doing most of the heavy lifting there. If you remove RTDs from the mix, total spirits volume was down 3.7%.
Those economic pressures appear to be taking something of a toll on premiumization, as total volume for overall spirits priced at $25 and above were down for the period that ended May 2023, versus a gain of 9.6% for the year ended May 2022. RTDs typically don’t play in the higher price tiers, so $25+ spirits didn’t have that volume to fall back on.
Currently, American whiskey priced at $25 and above accounts for 38.4% of all American whiskey and 19.1% of all spirits at the $25+ tier.
From a channel perspective, SipSource finds that 83.1% of volume for $25+ American whiskey is sold in off-premise locations, while 16.9% of its sales happens in the on-premise. ■
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