The Story of the Scientific Distiller
Michael Griffo, a distiller with a doctorate in physics, likens alcohol to — of all things — pancakes. A self-characterized “experimenter,” he walks the line between the romance of making spirits and the science to master it. In other...
Canada: 2023 in Review
As we enter 2024, Canadian distillers are holding their breath. Will the recession that began in 2023 continue — or will it turn around? How will that impact Canada’s craft distilling industry? The harsh consensus so far seems to...
Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour
Agro-tourism and eco-tourism have a nice ring for what they are, but alco-tourism sounds like a condition that requires attention.
Whatever you call it, whether it is the Scotch Whisky Trail, Portland’s Distillery Row, Tennessee Whiskey Trail, or the Iowa...
Max the Stillmaker
A Brazilian living in Rhode Island decides to design a still and contacts a Chinese manufacturer to build the prototype. The Chinese tell him they’ll be at the Independent Spirits Expo and he ought to come meet them there....
The New Orleans Distilling Scene
Let’s back up the van. If you were reading this article, say five years ago, it would be an entirely different story. In fact, I did write a piece about New Orleans’ fledgling distillery scene the summer of 2016....
Turning the Lights Back On at a Historic California Brandy Distillery
Master distiller and blender Hubert Germain-Robin is helping E & J Gallo Distillers bring the historic McCall Distillery in Sanger, CA, out of mothballs. Founded as Crest View in 1935, the facility operated originally as a winery and changed...
The Craft Maltsters
Rick Wasmund learned how to make whiskey by studying the Scots. Literally. He not only toured Scottish distilleries, he interned for a time at Bowmore Distillery in Islay, learning everything down to how to peat-smoke malt.
While there, he suggested...
Interview with Marko Karakasevic
When I think of Wine Country spirits, I think Charbay and the Karakasevic family. Certainly, they are distilling leaders, launching in 1983 around the same time as fellow NorCal/Bay Area pioneers St. George Spirits and Germain-Robin.
In a region that...
Iron Fish Distillery
For his 60th birthday, Richard Anderson’s wife delivered big.
Sarah Anderson sent him and brothers in-law, Dave Wallace and Craig Maxwell, to Scotland on a Scotch-tasting tour. It was a game changer. Sipping their way through distilleries across Islay, Scotland, propelled...
From Roadside Bombs to Colorado Moonshine
Mike Girard first became interested in distilling through a nontraditional route: explosives.
As a former US Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician (EOD) in Afghanistan in 2012, Girard found a way to re-forge swords of terrorism into ploughshares.
Girard took a pressure...
