In picturesque Greenport, New York, on the northern fork of Long Island, sits Matchbook Distilling Company. Matchbook is not a brand-focused distillery, churning out 50 states’ worth of the same product. Rather, it creates and develops custom spirits on an alternative timetable — almost as if their guide was The Old Farmer’s Almanac — for private clients and niche imbibing establishments looking to catch the eye of consumers drowning in a sea of choices.
Matchbook’s distilling projects are Mother Nature–inspired. Its latest botany-based endeavor, a vermouth called Eldest Daughter, began with fermenting the juice of biodynamic Oregon pinot gris grapes from Keeler Estate Vineyard to make wine. Then, Matchbook distilled half of it into an eau de vie, which was infused with elderflowers picked locally from Briermere Farms. After fortifying the wine with the eau de vie, they added dried Timur peppercorns sourced from Rare Tea Cellar. Released June 14, 2024, it is a rich, floral, yet citrusy vermouth with a 19% ABV.
“I was just such a fan of Craig Keeler’s farming that I bought his grapes. He’s in Oregon so he’d press the fruit and freeze it and ship it to me. What’s a distillery/winery to do with frozen juice? Make vermouth,” says Matchbook founder Leslie Merinoff Kwasnieski. “As I was making vermouth, my favorite local orchard, Briermere Farms, called me about a massive and time sensitive elderflower bloom. So now I have this in-process vermouth and I have all these elderflowers — combining them was just the obvious and necessary next step.”
Kwasnieski has deep connections to the liquor industry. Early members of her family founded Canadian Club whisky. Currently her father, Charles Merinoff, runs Breakthru Beverage Group, one of the largest wine and spirits wholesalers in the U.S. and Canada. Along with her family’s liquor industry lineage, she graduated with honors from some of the industry’s most iconic establishments, including a three year residency at Noble Experiment and another three at William Grant & Sons managing brands.
When Kwasnieski isn’t creating, she spends time talking to the TTB, fighting the good fight to change some of the rules about farms and their involvement in craft distilling with New York State. Previously, she presented and lobbied for Assembly Bill A10128A, which authorizes custom liquor production for a non-licensed individual by farm distilleries, as long as the product is intended exclusively for personal or family consumption.
As the demand for Matchbook’s boutique spirits grows, so must the distillery. They teamed up with the local Suffolk County Industrial Development Agency to purchase four buildings in Greenport. These buildings are the distillery and for production. It is one of the few things that Matchbook may have in common with some of the larger distilleries – the need to expand and continue to be impactful on the industry. Their divergence is doing it while not harming the community.
While other distilleries are named after the forefathers of distilling, Matchbook went a different way. To hear Leslie tell the tale: “We had all been going back and forth for so long about what to name it. And out of nowhere, Brian (Leslie’s husband) just said Matchbook. They spark people, they literally keep the light of spark. They kick off a chain of reactions. So yeah, we wanted to light a spark.”
Matchbook is a flora-driven futurist of a distillery. It doesn’t want to be the next Heaven Hill or Seagram’s. Kwasnieski doesn’t spend much time looking at what other distilleries are doing. Instead, the brand’s goal is to lead by innovation and agriculture — claiming the future of distilling by not following in the footfalls of giants but by making small yet significant changes to business as usual.
