Whiskey Business: How Small-Batch Distillers Are Transforming American Spirits

392 Pages·2017·5.06 MB·English

by  Tom Acitelli

Copyright © 2017 by Tom AcitelliAll rights reserved
First edition
Published by Chicago Review Press Incorporated
814 North Franklin Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
ISBN 978-1-61373461-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Acitelli, Tom, author.
Title: Whiskey business: how small-batch distillers are transforming
American spirits / Tom Acitelli.
Description: First edition. | Chicago, Illinois: Published by Chicago Review
Press Incorporated, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016045148 (print) | LCCN 2016046748 (ebook) | ISBN
9781613734582 (trade paper) | ISBN 9781613734599 (adobe pdf) | ISBN
9781613734612 (epub) | ISBN 9781613734605 (kindle)
Subjects: LCSH: Whiskey industry—United States—History. | Distilling
industries—United States—History.
Classification: LCC TP590.6.U6 A43 2017 (print) | LCC TP590.6.U6 (ebook) |
DDC 338.4/7663520973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016045148
Cover design: Jonathan Hahn
Cover image: House Spirits Distillery
Typesetting: Nord Compo
Printed in the United States of America
5 4 3 2 1
This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.
To my in-laws, John and Suzanne Rudy
CONTENTS
Aperitif - And Then There Were Craft Spirits
2013|Boston
PART I
“THAT SHIT WILL BLOW YOUR EARS OFF”
1953–1959|Loretto, Kentucky
CHANGES BREWING
1965–1975|San Francisco—Napa Valley
COFFEE WITH DINNER
1976–1978|San Francisco Bay Area—Paris
A CLEAR FAVORITE
1978|Manhattan
FRONT-PAGE NEWS
1980|Loretto, Kentucky
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO COGNAC
1964–1981|Cognac, France—Ukiah, California
FRESH FRUIT IN THE “ROTTENEST CITY”
1981–1982|Emeryville, California
PART II
AMERICAN COGNAC
1982–1983|Mendocino County, California
GLITTER AND GEKKO
1981–1983|Manhattan—Spring Mountain, California—Loretto, Kentucky
A SINGULAR IDEA
1978–1985|Scottish Highlands—Santiago de Cuba
LIGHTNING IN A BARREL
1984–1987|Frankfort, Kentucky
“YUPPIE BEER”
1982–1984|Manhattan—Boston
THE NEW WHITE WINE
1985|Manhattan
OF PEARS AND BEARS
1983–1990|Portland, Oregon
PART III
“AN AFTER-SCHOOL SPECIAL BROUGHT TO LIFE”
1986|College Park, Maryland—Washington, DC
CRUSADE
1986|Washington, DC
CIGARETTE MACHINES
1987–1988|Ukiah, California—Washington, DC
THE WRITE TIME
1987–1992|Manhattan
VIRGINIA LIGHTNING
1988–1993|Culpeper County, Virginia
YOUNG BLOOD FROM AN OLD BREWERY
1993–1996|San Francisco
MAKING MARKS
1994|Fairborn, Ohio—West Point, New York—Loretto, Kentucky
GOOSING SALES
1996–1999|New Rochelle, New York—New Orleans
LITTLE BERT AND THE BIG IDEA
1997–1998|Houston—Travis County, Texas—Napa Valley
CRAFT VS. CRAFTY
1996–2000|Manhattan—Bra, Italy
GETTING A TASTE FOR IT
1996–1999|Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania—Manhattan
RISE OF THE FOODIES
1990–2000|Venice, Italy
MULTIPLE SINGLES
1995–2000|Alameda, California
TEQUILA FROM A BRANDY SNIFTER
1995–2000|Irwindale, California—Jalisco, Mexico
MIXING IN GIN
1996–1998|Bend, Oregon—San Francisco
PART IV
NO NEED FOR A SMUGGLER’S TREE
1997–2001|Ashford, Connecticut—Barnet, Vermont—Cincinnati—Bend, Oregon—New Orleans—Kelso, Tennessee
BREAKOUT STARS
2001–2004|Alameda, California
BUFFALO BILL AND THE LEGAL STAMPEDE
2000–2003|Hayward, California
HURDLES FALL
2000–2003|Schoharie County, New York
THE GOLDEN AGE BEGINS
2003–2010|Gardiner, New York—Milwaukee—Denver—Spokane, Washington
DON DRAPER ORDERS AN OLD FASHIONED
2007–2010|Manhattan
POURING OUT WORDS
2000–2010|Nationwide
CRAFT BEFORE THERE WAS CRAFT
2007–2010|Loretto, Kentucky
THE MOVEMENT’S DEFINING MOMENT
2010–2015|Nationwide
THE CHALLENGE AHEAD
2014–2015|Travis County, Texas
Digestif - “Distilled in Indiana”
2015–2016|Lawrenceburg, Indiana
Acknowledgments
Endnotes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Aperitif
AND THEN THERE WERE CRAFT SPIRITS
2013|Boston
It was an ungodly hour to be drinking rum. I wanted, however, to see Buffalo Bill
Owens, who opened one of America’s first brewpubs, and this was my chance.
We had spoken by phone and e-mailed several times for my history of American
craft beer, yet had never actually met. He had moved on from craft beer to
another interest and would be in Boston that weekend in June 2013 to tour a new
distillery that his trade group, the American Distilling Institute, helped promote.
He knew I lived in nearby Cambridge. Would I like to meet?
The craft beer history had been published, but yes, meeting Bill would be a
treat, even if it meant an early Saturday wake-up, as well as a subway ride and a
long walk, to a more remote area of South Boston. Two first cousins had started
GrandTen Distilling in 2011 in an old iron foundry, one of several long-docile
warehouse spaces in Southie, an area that had transitioned from industry and
organized crime to biotechnology and food trucks. Matt Nuernberger had an
MBA and therefore handled the business side, and his cousin Spencer McMinn
was a chemistry PhD who handled the distilling. Matt and Spencer were both
there when I arrived, as was Bill, dressed in a black vest over an orange short-
sleeved shirt, square brown glasses perched on a perfectly triangular nose just
above a thin, white mustache that matched his salty, spiky hair. Bill held court
throughout the entire tour, which included a rundown of GrandTen’s equipment,
such as its gorgeous copper stills, and which ended with samples at the small bar
toward the former foundry’s front.
I sipped GrandTen’s rum . . . and was pleasantly blown away. Fresh and
flavorful, clean in mouthfeel and appearance, it tasted like no other spirit I had
consumed before—none of that acrid, overly alcoholic taste so common to
bigger brands. Instead, the spirit’s components were distinct and upfront,
particularly the molasses, which provided the rum’s sugar. Here was a spirit you
could savor, not simply knock back to get drunk quickly.
As novel as their products tasted—I also sampled a whiskey and a gin—
GrandTen’s operation was thoroughly familiar, from the backstory to the vibe to
the physicality. The place looked and felt like a craft brewery: relatively small
and, by necessity, cramped; in an area of town that could certainly use the trade;
the libations produced in small batches with more traditional methods anathema
to bigger, macro-competitors (which, to be honest, probably did not see
GrandTen as much of a competitor in 2013); and the cousins Nuernberger and
McMinn casual in appearance and tone but unapologetically earnest about what
they were doing. Business-wise, too, the distillery was familiar: a start-up in the
drinks business crafting its wares for sale locally and not much beyond. The
emphasis was on craftsmanship and connectedness, not putting a bottle in
everyone’s dining (or dorm) room or liquor cabinet. It was much the same ethos
that craft brewers had long emphasized, beginning back in the 1960s and really
picking up steam in the 1980s, when entrants such as Owens himself decided to
start making small batches of beer with traditional methods and ingredients, and
selling it locally and not much beyond—in Owens’s case, in the same Northern
California restaurants where the beer was made.
I easily discovered that I was far from the first to make this spirits-beer
connection. The whole thing seemed like a rerun at first glance; only the drink
had changed. Connecting what was being called “craft spirits” with craft beer
seemed de rigueur in media coverage of the emerging trend. And several craft
distilleries seemed to understand that journalists and consumers expected that.
The packaging of many craft spirits, and the official backstories provided on