Craft whiskey distillers in Brooklyn? Yes, with a side of chocolate

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/sep/14/craft-distillers-brooklyn-whisky-bourbon-chocolate

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At a red-brick warehouse that sits on a quiet, cobblestone street in this once industrial enclave of Brooklyn, Vince Oleson is trying his hand at perfecting “the science of separating the seemingly inseparable”.

If it sounds like it’s more about philosophy than making a drinkable whiskey, that’s not surprising. Good whiskey is no longer about pulling down the top-shelf stuff at a bar. As craft distillers proliferate, producing a good cask of whiskey is becoming an esoteric practice.

Oleson, the tattooed 29-year-old head distiller at the Red Hook-based Widow Jane distillery, along with Widow Jane’s founder and owner Daniel Preston, has the respect for terroir that is common across food and drink entrepreneurs across Brooklyn. Much of their time is spent as amateur geneticists, crossing unusual strains of locally grown, organic corn varietals.

They blend them with a not-so-secret ingredient: water from the Widow Jane limestone mine from upstate New York.

Kentucky distillers claim the right kind of water is essential for quality bourbon. Oleson thinks the “sweet and smooth” water from the Widow Jane mine meets the bar.

“It sounds like a gimmick, but it brings a lot of awesome characteristics out of the whiskey,” says Oleson. “It enhances all our spirits but especially our bourbons.”

The corn has a pedigree too. Oleson, with Preston, has produced whiskey from a half-dozen corn varieties grown on Preston’s three hundred-acre farm in upstate New York.

Their non-genetically modified heirloom grains, Preston explains, are more difficult to distil and more costly to produce. They are high in proteins and low in starches, making it difficult and inefficient to extract the sugars required for the fermentation process. They also produce significantly lower yields – one-tenth to one-quarter as much as their factory farm-grown counterparts.

Craft bourbon, as it turns out, is only just the latest concoction of Cacao Prieto, the company founded by Preston. The former aerospace engineer with a background of lucrative startups and inventions is also producing “single-source” organic chocolate.

After selling off a parachute technology company he founded, Preston went back to his roots: he invested in refurbishing his family’s hundred-year-old defunct cacao farm in the Dominican Republic.

Preston began experimenting with organic farming and chocolate-making techniques, and after having secured complete ownership of the entire supply process, Cacao Prieto was born. (He also founded Cacao Biotechnologies, which serves as the laboratory for his array of flavour experiments.)

As a result, among the high-ryes and bourbons at Widow Jane, Oleson produces a variety of chocolate-infused rums and liqueurs that colourfully adorn the wall to the entrance of Cacao Prieto. The combination of distillery and chocolate factory seems an odd fit. But the foray into craft bourbon was a natural extension of Preston’s belief in experimentation.

“We’re trying to change the way people think about what goes in their bourbon,” says Oleson.

The goal: to produce an assortment of quality, handcrafted, heirloom whiskey that will appeal to variety of tastes. Oleson and Preston are setting their sights on what they call “the big guys”, industry heavyweights like Maker’s Mark, Jim Beam and Jack Daniels. Because of the popularity of the established brands, most people believe whiskey lives in Tennessee and bourbon hails only from Kentucky.

“But we’re doing it right here in our backyard”, Oleson says.

It’s a crowded backyard at the moment. Widow Jane is one among nearly 50 functioning distilleries now in operating New York, according to Andrew Faulkner of the American Distilling Institute.

Thanks to a loosening of state licensing regulations and a growing demand for artesanal quality, New York is now home to one of the largest concentrations of craft distilleries in the country. (Take that, Kentucky.) There are at least seven independent distilleries producing spirits in Brooklyn alone.

Across the US, the number of craft distilleries has grown nearly 800% in the last decade, numbering roughly over 600 today.

Oleson doesn’t seem fazed by the competition. “We’re all in this together,” he says. “It’s a community, and for me, a high tide lifts all boats.”

Indeed, in Kentucky, which produces 95% of the world’s bourbon, the state distillers association says that bourbon production has reached record levels not seen since the 1970s. Production has grown by more than 150% in the last 15 years, driven in part, the state association claims, by “premium and small-batch and single barrel brands”.

As a craft distiller, it may work. As a business, they’re still working out the kinks.

Preston says that after a $6m investment to get his chocolate business off the ground, sales from Widow Jane whiskey sales enabled him to break even after just 15 months. He says the distiller is now supplying over 1,600 bars, restaurants and liquor stores in New York City and distributing their bourbon as far west as Colorado. Preston hopes to go national within six months.

Scale is the challenge. The ingredients are expensive, but Preston is undeterred. “The economics are just not in our favour,” admits Preston. “Everyone said we were crazy. They said it couldn’t be done and then they said it wouldn’t make a difference. I wanted to prove them wrong.”

The brass ring is a respectable chunk of the $2.5bn in revenues that whiskeys and bourbons earned last year, according to the Distilled Spirits Council. That number has nearly doubled over the last decade, driven by demand for what the national trade association calls “high-end” and “super” premium brands.

Industry heavyweights have taken notice. William Grant and Sons, for example, which owns the Glenfiddich Scotch Whisky and Hendrick’s Gin labels, recently acquired the Hudson Whiskey line from Tuthilltown Spirits – New York’s first and oldest micro distillery.

There are, however, sceptics. Clay Risen, an editor at the New York Times and author of American Whiskey, Bourbon & Rye, suggests most consumers don’t yet have the palate to judge subtle differences in bourbons.

“Widow Jane is well-positioned but how it plays depends on the sophistication of consumers and what consumers care about,” says Risen.

He believes that heirloom grains and limestone-filtered water don’t make that much of difference to consumers. In the end, he says, “it’s what consumers care about”.

Still, experimentation is welcome. “You have to have people playing around, taking risks and emphasising different ingredients and parts of the process,” Risen says. “It’s very cool that these guys are trying.”

Preston is making a bet that he has time to get creative before consumers get bored and move on to the next big trend. He’s enlarging the company’s farm in upstate New York to 3,000 acres. He’s also in the process of building an offsite expansion, which, Preston says, will be the first carbon-neutral commercial distillery in the world.

Meanwhile, Oleson is cross-breeding two of their heirloom corn varieties to produce the next in their line of bourbons. They are going to call it “Baby Jane”.