Deacon Giles Distillery of Salem, Massachusetts
WHISKEY WITCH CITY in the
Written by SAILOR GUEVAR A Photos Provided by DE ACON GILES DISTILLERY
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an Hunter and Jesse Brenneman met and became friends while working at the famed Harpoon Brewery. The two would share shift drinks and ponder the future, feeling that there were few growth opportunities for them at Harpoon. Hunter was in finance, and Brenneman was a brewer, so they felt they had the perfect combination of experience for something new. They teamed up to go into business for themselves and build a distillery. Hunter and Brenneman, who resided in Salem, felt that their adopted city was W W W . ARTISANSPIRITMAG . C O M
a great location for the distillery. Being a commuter town to Boston and on the water, Salem has become a favorite destination outside of the month of October when you can barely move through the streets due to the crush of Halloween tourists. Salem, despite its dark history of persecuting suspected witches, has transformed into a waterfront mecca for food,
drink, culture, and the arts in recent years. Deacon Giles Distillery is a perfect fit for Salem, a small town packed with history, culture, and intrigue. When it came time to choose a name they leaned into the theme of their city. Hunter, a history buff, came across a story about Deacon Amos Giles, a fictional distiller, an impious Massachusetts man known for “distilling rum on the Sabbath, paying his employees with liquor, and selling bibles from his counting room.” The story was written by George Cheevers, a 63