Breaking the Myth that Only Pot Stills Make Good Spirits 

In 2008, Master Distiller Jordan Via was an instrumental part of the first ADI classes at Stillwater distillery in Petaluma, California. The majority of those students went on to found distilleries in the US (click here).

Jordan went on to co-found Breckenridge Spirits in Colorado, where he installed and operated his first column still. Over the years, Jordan has taught numerous week-long workshops in distillery operations for ADI.

Returning to the San Francisco Bay Area after a decade, Jordan has added Master Distiller at another world-class distillery to his resume: Savage & Cooke. Citing Dave Pickerell as a mentor, Jordan will explain his philosophy of distilling and blending world class whiskeys at this 3-day workshop on October 25-27 at Savage & Cooke in Vallejo, California. 

Attendees will learn the ins and outs of  how to run a column still for a medium sized distillery. This workshop provides 25 hours of practical instruction, including three to four hours of hands-on experience per day complemented with lectures on planning, operation, and marketing of a distilled spirit brand. Topics covered will include: 

• Raw material procurement
• Grain handling, selection, contracting and QC
• Fermentation planning
• Fermentation execution
• Start-up process
• Dynamic equalization (believe it or not, you make your tails cut in the first 30 minutes)
• Temperature controls for fermentation, distillation, aging, and storage)
• Process checkpoints
• Barrel selection, maturation and considerations
• Blending, gauging, and obscuration
• Barrel house operations, including single barrel vs. big batch blending
• Bottling considerations and operations
• Tasting and sensory evaluation
• Distribution
• Marketing your brand

Friday 10/25 –  9am-5pm

Saturday 10/26 – 9 am-5pm, Dinner 6-8pm

Sunday 10/27 – 9 am- noon

Host Distillery:

Savage and Cook Distillery

Mare Island

Vallejo, CA

Early Bird pricing ($2,750) ends August 31, 2024 at midnight PST

Savage & Cooke Tasting Room, Distillery and Event Center is on Mare Island, in Vallejo, CA is one of the largest and most beautiful distilleries in California. Their award winning spirits were originally a sourced, and now after laying down whiskey for 5 years are in process of changing over to in house distilled local CA grown ingredients.