Saturday Distillery Tours

About a year ago, two of my favorite girlfriends and I embarked on an adventure to the city of New Orleans to celebrate our 110th birthday. As a special treat for the girls, I used Groupon to book a chocolate tour on Saturday afternoon and a cocktail tour on Sunday afternoon. After strolling through the Bloody Mary Festival along the riverfront, we ended up at the St Joan of Arc statue on Decatur Street about fifteen minutes prior to the appointed time. So we sipped our drinks and waited. And waited. And walked around the statue. And waited some more. Finally, I called the tour operator on my cell phone. He informed me that the tour had been cancelled and that he had emailed me two days ago to inform me of the cancellation. Of course, I had received no such email. So we went up Decatur Street to Tujagues for Grasshoppers and brunch in order to figure out what our next move would be.

Eventually, I launched into a battle with Groupon to get the tour prices refunded because I never wanted anything else to do with that tour company. The best that they could do was a credit on Groupon that was good for 24 hours. So I had to think fast about what I wanted to do with the money. I put in my zip code and up popped some deals for my area, including a tasting tour at the whiskey distillery north of me. I had remembered that my really good friend had a great time when she toured there with her crew. So I bought four tickets.

As soon as I purchased those four tickets, up popped offers for two more distillery tours in the area. It was a no brainer to book those as well in order to use up the credit in a timely fashion. The only thing left to do was to coordinate the crew's calendars to make the tours happen. After Easter, we agreed to meet up in about four weeks for brunch prior to our tour of the three distilleries.

The Brunch

Brunch is one of my favorite meals to host. I love making a huge frittata and assorted mini muffins for the brunch spread. I even have various different pitchers for breakfast juices, tea, coffee, and milk. There is something quite elegant about a well prepared brunch. So I had suggested that I host the pre-tour brunch at my house; however, the crew would hear nothing of it. We all agreed that a hearty brunch prior to the tour was an excellent idea, but my really good friend insisted that she host it because I was providing the tour tickets and she was centrally located to the distilleries. Besides, she was our designated driver. So I conceded to let her host brunch.

Of course, as soon as I walked into my really good friend's house, I was greeted by the adorable pups and the smell of brunch. I found her in the kitchen frying sausage in one pan and making hash browns in another pan. After some chitchat with her and her sister, I was dispatched to help her sister set the table. That's when things got crazy. She kept handing us bowls of food to put on the table: blueberries, strawberries, two different types of cheese, salami, carrots, celery, and more. At one point, she even pulled cheese quesadillas out of the oven. And this is someone who always teases me about the abundance of food at my dinner parties! When we finally sat down to brunch, she mentioned that she had been considering making buttermilk pancakes as well, but decided against it. I had to laugh!

After a delicious brunch, the four of us packed up the leftovers into the appropriate containers. My really good friend produced a softsided cooler and announced that the leftovers were coming with us for our snack time. I had stopped at the grocery store before heading over, so I also had a canvas bag full of snacks: Triscuits, gluten free crackers, Baby Bel cheeses, and tiny Halo oranges. Of course, as we were loading up the trunk, I discovered that my really good friend also had a canvas bag full of bags of chips and other goodies. So we were totally set for a substantial snack time.

The Whiskey Distillery

My really good friend and her crew had visited the Onyx Moonshine Distillery with her father the previous fall. However, they were super excited to go back because they had such a great time there. And I was really lucky that they had been there before because it was in such an obscure location that I would have never have found it. We drove into a U shaped industrial park, and it was almost invisible because it was on one of the legs of the U. To get into the tasting space, you had to move a bookcase, which gave the space a cool speakeasy vibe.

After Kenny greeted us and redeemed my Groupon, he issued us each a Whiskey Pass for six half-ounce tastings of the various Onyx products. With each tasting, there was the option to make a cocktail of it by adding a mixer. Fortunately, the other girls knew the drill because I was confused. Basically, we should start at the bar to hear about the tasting offered and to get our glasses filled, but we could retreat to a private high top table to converse and enjoy our tasting - until it was time to return to the bar to check the next circle off our Whiskey Pass.

The first tasting we did was the Onyx Black 80, which was their premuim moonshine. It was supposed to taste like a smooth vodka, but I wasn't getting that at all. So I took the option to mix it with the Pineapple Coriander mixer, while the other ladies opted for the margarita mixer. After all, it was Cinco de Mayo. Mixed, it was very good, as it didn't leave a sharp alcohol taste behind the juices.

The second tasting we did was their Apple Honey, which was the result of local Honeycrisp apples (and some winter baking spices) steeping in their premium moonshine. My really good friend's sister was looking forward to this one because the mixing option in the fall was warm apple cider, which created a very memorable hot drink. But since it was almost summer, we were offered room temperature apple cider. The combination of the two was remarkably good, although it helped that the cider that they used as a mixer was a really good quality local cider.

The third tasting we did was their Cape Cod Cranberry, which was the result of Massachusetts cranberries steeping in their premium moonshine. Since this, like the Apple Honey, was an infusion rather than a liqueur, there was no sugar added to the bottle. So the resulting liquor was rather tart, just like eating a straight fresh cranberry. We each went with the option to mix that with lemonade instead of drinking it straight.

Things got interesting when we tested the Secret Stash Reserve whiskey, which was their premium moonshine aged in charred American oak barrels for 17 months. Then the barrels were blended together and aged in a different barrel for another 17 months. We had the option of mixing that with lemon to make a whiskey sour, but we all decided to walk away from the bar with our glasses of straight whiskey. We liked it that much.

But the Secret Stash wasn't the best bottle of the day. Every so often, the whiskey blenders discover a barrel with unique properties, so they set that aside to age in its original barrel for another 17 months rather than blend it with other barrels. That is how they create their Private Stash whiskey. We were fortunate enough to test a bottle from barrel #47, which was even better than the Secret Stash Reserve whiskey. My really good friend's sister loved it so much that she looked through their stock to find the last bottle from barrel #47.

I definitely refused the option to taste the Onyx 111, although two of the ladies did give it a go. I was in a very happy place at that point and didn't want to upset the balance. I did, however, succumb to the allure of the infusion upgrade. I don't remember whether these were infusions of the Black 80 or the Onyx 111, but the majority of the options seemed very appealing. The lineup included twizzlers, lemonheads, Swedish fish, berry spice, pineapple jalapeno, and blackberry mojito. Since I had asked about the twizzlers infusion earlier, that's the one I went with. And it was so good. I almost think that I need to learn how to make candy based infusions - once I deplete my stock of the other infusions that I've made!

The two disappointments about our visit to Onyx were that this was their last weekend in their current (super cool) space and that there was really no distillery operations to be seen. The crew had told me that, during their last visit, the master distiller had given them a talk about the process from the balcony overlooking the production floor. However, this time, the production floor looked like it had already been packed up. So much for the educational aspect of the visit!

Snack Time

After we piled into the vehicle at Onyx, my really good friend decided that she needed a Diet Coke. Fortunately, she knew where she was and where a Walgreens was located in relation to us, so there was absolutely no drama involved in satisfying that need. In fact, she was kind enough to get each of us our own soda, because the bottles of water that I had brought for everyone didn't have the caffeine we needed to keep us going.

After the Diet Coke mission was accomplished, my really good friend started to look for a park or some place where we could settle down to dig into all the snacks that we had packed. Unfortunately, the best that we could do was a shady spot along the edge of a commuter parking lot near the highway. But that worked out perfectly! We all hopped out of the vehicle and laid out our feast in the trunk. We must have been a sight from the main road, but we were definitely enjoying ourselves, continuing our conversations from Onyx and stuffing our bellies with the brunch leftovers. And once we were each sated, we packed the food back into the cooler and the canvas bags, and then set out to our next destination.

The Liqueur Distillery

Hartford Flavor Company, which makes Wild Moon Liqueurs, was actually located not far from the state law school. Where I used to take a right at the light off the highway exit, we took a left off the highway exit and wound around one or two side streets until we turned just short of the art space. Of course, we were grateful for the signage because it was around the back of an industrial building and not that easy to spot.

Of course, I was super excited to be there because I had a six pack sampler of Wild Moon liqueurs that I had been working my way through testing since last November. I had mixed their cucumber, rose, and cranberry liqueurs into drinks using the recipes on their website, but I still had yet to work with the lavender, birch, and chai spice liqueurs. And, as a special treat, the distillery had recently launched a lime liqueur, which was also on the tasting menu.

The tasting space was a large concrete bay that was connected by a door to a small, but well appointed, bar. Boxes of liqueur were stacked along the walls, steel drums of liqueur were in the center, and off to the back was the bottling area. Everything in the process was done by hand, and everyone employed by the company seemed to do a little bit of everything.

Hillary, the Lady of the Lair, was our guide for the tasting session and short tour of the facility - which really just entailed walking from one side of the space to the other. But she ran a very informative tasting session. We each got tiny plastic cups - probably the size of shot glasses - into which she poured two or three millimeters of the first liqueur and explained its genesis, peculiar production process, and uses. Then we tasted it. Hillary then moved on to the next liqueur, pouring and explaining while we were tasting, and so on until we worked our way from the lightest cucumber liqueur to the heaviest chai spice liqueur. We switched out glasses two or three times along the way, to prevent cross contamination between the different flavors.

After we finished our tastings, Hillary walked us over to the steel drums and explained that Hartford Flavor isn't truly a "distillery" because they purchase sugar cane liquor from the Netherlands. They are more of an "infusionary" because the bulk of their process involves infusing that sugar cane liquor with botanicals, spices, and other natural ingredients. Broken down to its most basic sense, what they did to convert the sugar cane liquor into fabulous liqueurs sounded almost like what I do at home when I create my Buddhacello.

My favorite part of the tour, without a doubt, was the research and development shelf over by the bottling area. On those shelves, they had a very impressive variety of bottles in all different shapes and sizes, filled with liqueurs of all different colors. Each bottle was clearly labeled with its contents, so I could tell that there was a tremendous variety of different flavors on that shelf - from spices to vegetables and from fruits to teas. I almost asked if I could try a few! However, before I could ask, Hillary offered that there would be a tasting panel that Tuesday and Wednesday night, and we were welcome to participate in order to help determine the next flavor launch. Of course, the crew encouraged me to clear my calendar!!!

After the tour, we were invited back to the bar for a free mixed drink of our choice from their Spring tasting menu. Since it was Cinco de Mayo, we also had the option of ordering a margarita with any of the liqueur flavors. Both my really good friend and her sister decided to pass on their drinks, so the other two of us got to choose two drinks apiece. I chose two drinks featuring the lime liqueur - one called the Botanist, and the other called Sencha Spring. In addition to the lime liqueur, the Botanist also contained cucumber liqueur and rosemary infused gin, which made it absolutely delicious! I didn't look too closely at what the Sencha Spring contained in addition to the lime liqueur, but it was a really light and refreshing highball.

The Verdict

The distillery tour was a terrific Saturday outing with the girls. Although I was tempted to buy a bottle of the lime liqueur, I did actually make it through the day without buying any merchandise at either of the distilleries. The best part was that we four ladies had so much time in between the tastings and tours to just sit and chat. At Onyx, we retreated to a little table away from the bar in between pours to just talk. After the tasting tour at Hartford Flavor, the co-founder found us a table in the tasting room where we could all sit and enjoy our drinks over a good conversation. We even had time to take out our calendars and set a date to visit the third distillery that we didn't get to. In fact, in reviewing the brochure on the Connecticut Spirits Trail over our drinks at Hartford Flavor, we discovered that there was a distillery in my really good friend's town that made gluten free spirits, so I'm thinking that we could add that to the agenda for our next tour at the end of June.