Each summer, the editorial team shacks up for a day and brainstorms ideas for the next year’s cover stories. After shelving it the prior year, we decided it was finally time. There were finally enough. We could fill a cover story with Northern Virginia-based distilleries.
I profiled 11 operations spanning the region from Winchester to Culpeper. I tasted just about every product from every distillery I visited, including a yet-to-be-released vermouth fromMt. Defiance Cidery & Distillery that I cannot wait to buy for myself. I visited the small Middleburg storefront hours after Peter Ahlf gathered a group of friends and industry professionals for a taste test, and I sampled the remains. It was one of the best starts to an interview ever.
While this issue is a guide—not reviews or rankings because many of the distilleries are so young they don’t even have a whiskey or bourbon to show—I did have a few favorites along the way. My home bar cart now boasts Mt. Defiance’s Absinthe, MurLarkey‘s Imagination Gin, Old House‘s Harvest Triple Distilled Vodka and Belmont Farm‘s Kopper Kettle Golden Gin, though I wanted to buy many more. (I also have a stack of cocktail books, too.)
Many of the distillers focus on rum, which was the preeminent spirit of the colonies before the 1764 Sugar Act levied crippling taxes on molasses. I’ve vowed to try to get more into this Virginia-made liquor, replacing my memories of college night rum and cokes. And it won’t be hard. In the next few months, Adima Aniteye hopes to open Queen Victoria, a distillery featuring rum and the punches she learned from her Liberian grandmother. (P.S. Here’s another one opening.)
With wine, beer and now spirits, Virginia is more drinkable by the minute.
