Micro-Distilling Knows No Borders

For the last two decades, craft breweries have sprung up all over the country and truly changed the way the United States and the world have gone about purchasing and consuming beer. As someone who grew up in Wisconsin, I was often chastised for the horrible mass producers like Old Milwaukee, Miller, Schlitz, Pabst and others. While those criticisms may have had merit, those States, like nearly all of them, enjoyed a renaissance in beer production with hundreds of craft breweries sprouting up statewide.

However, the shift from bartender to mixologist in the last decade brought back the cocktail culture of Mad Men and decades past, and with this cocktail resurgence has come the micro-distillery, which often brings “farm to bar” offerings across the nation.

Sticking with Wisconsin, Death’s Door Spirits has taken the gin out of London and placed it where it belongs: among the wealth of aromatics that grow naturally in the wilds of Washington Island off Door County Peninsula in Lake Michigan. This small-batch gin is nothing short of fantastic and shows distillation is possible nearly anywhere.

Portland, Ore., is one of the best craft brewery cities in the United States and following that evolution, the city hosts a number of small distilleries that bring Portland’s small-bath liquor in line with its love of food and beer. A fine example of craft distillation is the New Deal Distillery, began with a $3,500 investment and has grown each and every year, collecting awards every year for the last half decade.

While Brooklyn and bourbon don’t generally come to mind if you consider Kentucky as the home of this truly American spirit, a former Kentucky resident is the owner of King County Distillery, producing phenomenal moonshines, bourbons and ryes out of a warehouse whose operations would make a bootlegger proud.