ROAD TRIPPER - A DAY IN THE BERKSHIRES

I was fascinated when I heard about Katonahgrown Chris Weld. Son of a teacher at Rippowam Cisqua, Chris recalls “It was such a great area to be a kid, and it seemed like a different time. I was always getting my hands dirty; gardening with my father and making grape jelly with my mother. My dad used to take us fishing and hunting on his friend’s large property in South Salem, where 10 acre gravel pits had filled with water - and some pretty big fish! At 14, we had a family rule: don’t drive more than five miles from home, and do not cross route 35.” Chris attended Millbrook, and then Skidmore College, and went on to a 15 year career as an Emergency/Trauma Physicians Assistant in California, working in the ‘knife and gun club’ emergency departments’ of the Bay area.

...Then, in 2004, he and his wife Tyler and kids moved just north of the Connecticut/ Massachusetts border to the Berkshires, to live on a farm with historic spring waters, to enjoy things like hiking on the Appalachian trail and the fruit trees - both right in their backyard. Although Chris had dabbled in spirits in the past (an 8th grade moonshine project that his mother had shut down), in 2007 Chris became a pioneer in the craft distilling movement, and started Berkshire Mountain Distillers...which, almost 15 years later, is a renowned small-batch craft distiller of gin, vodka, whiskey and bourbon. Among other accolades, Berkshire Mountain Distillers has had their Greylock gin named the #1 craft gin in the Country by the New York Times, and won Jim Murry’s gold medal for their bourbon, been named a James Beard nominee, and has even made custom gins for Blue Hill Stone Barns, and Union Square Hospitality Group (Danny Meyer’s restaurant group).

...And in 2017, when recreational marijuana was legalized in Massachusetts, and taking advantage of Sheffield’s just-over-the-border closest-drivingdistance-to-Fairfield/Westchester/NYC location, Chris co-founded The Pass (just three miles up Route 7 from the Distillery)...which is now a vertically integrated business (they grow, process, produce, brand, market and sell their own products, as well as selling other branded and licensed products in their Sheffield retail location) selling marijuana flower, oil, tinctures, and edibles (gummies, chocolates, etc.) in a wide variety of strains, flavors and potencies.

I had to check it out, and as I’ve been looking to do day trips to feature in B&NC MAG, like the Porsche Driving Experience at Lime Rock I wrote about in our Jan/Feb issue, I figured I’d make a winter afternoon in the Berkshires and an overnight at the Red Lion Inn out of it. Of course: anything and everything purchased at the Distillery must be transported back home in a sealed container, and; anything and everything purchased at The Pass must be consumed in accordance with the law of, and whilst in, Massachusetts, as it remains illegal to bring marijuanaina into, or consume it in, the States of Connecticut and New York. Personally, I like to have a drink or two to unwind, and prefer bourbon, but I’m not a smoker, and ...To my surprise, I found out Chris feels similarly.

When I pulled up to Berkshire Mountain Distillers, after what was only a one hour forty minute drive from New Canaan, there was a campfire putting off a rich smell, with benches set up in front of the big windowed building. I’d arrived right when the store opened at 11a.m., and made my way into the large, open and bright retail store and bar / tasting room, and Chris was ready to give me the grand tour.

Starting out in the store, I was impressed with the variety of the offerings. First, there was gin and vodka and whiskey and bourbon; and I wasn’t aware that all of those things could or would be made in the same place - and wasn’t too sure about the difference between whiskey and bourbon in any event. Second, there were lots of different types of each liquor, both in terms of the label and in terms of multiple editions based off of different formulations. So Chris kindly explained that, “Bourbon is a type of whiskey that’s made with at least 51% corn, and aged in virgin charred American oak barrels. You see, all bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon.” Many of BMD’s “distilling is spirits have unique ‘mash-bills’, or recipes, and others are altered by a science but distilling the spirit through botanicals. BMD’s vodka and gin are made from blending is an the same base spirit however their gins are distilled with botanicals and have that customary Juniper aroma. There artform”

is a wonderful industry saying - ‘ distilling is a science but blending is an artform’ - we need to blend our spirits to produce the end product that we desire.” Chris went on “Small batch is what we’re all about at Berkshire Mountain. Our customer is an enthusiast, who can’t wait to come pick up our latest offering. The whole thing is about subtle, but quite detectable, nuances in the taste from one batch to the next. In order to stay relevant and engaged BMD is continuously putting out new spirits . Their latest project that is being released presently, ‘the craft brewers whiskey project ‘ involves 12 brewers , 12 beers and 12 whiskies . These unique whiskies have been distilled from the beers of brewers such as ; Sam Adams , Harpoon , Ommegang and Captain Lawrence , and will be released throughout 2021 . BMD , a medium sized craft distillery focuses on quality rather than quantity and subsequently often hustles to keep up with demand.

Well, as we moved into the cavernous fermentation and distilling room it seemed to me like the huge shiny steel containers reaching up to the ceiling, filling the space, all connected with pipes, and spewing steam from spigots being attended by a couple of employees - they seemed like they could make an ocean of alcohol. As Chris took me through the whole utterly fascinating process, he explained what happens during fermentation. How yeast, while digesting sugars, creates a multitude of compounds, one of which being ethanol, all with their own volatilities. These compounds are distilled ‘off’ in fractions - the ‘heads’, ‘hearts’ and ‘tails’. Before being ready for either bottling or aging, the BMD crew tastes through the ‘cuts’, or fractions, and blends what will eventually become the final product. I was as impressed with Chris’ obvious command of all the science involved in the distilling process and the operation going on around us, as I was by the size, sparkling cleanliness, and almost medicinal feel of the facility.

But when we moved into the processing room, where a few more employees were bottling whiskey and stacking the bottles to be packaged, Chris brought it all down to appropriate scale for me, “We make about 20,000 cases a year. Jack Daniels makes more than ten times that every day. It would take us ten years to produce what they make in a day. Larger producers focus on consistency, we focus on variety and quality.” So, as we circled back to the retail area and I was leaving, I made sure to get a variety of cask finished bourbons to bring home, and picked up an extra-large shaker from the wide-ranging offering of bartending products, branded clothing, drink mixers and specialty foods available.

Next stop, five minutes away - The Pass. Another big building, this one designed by Chris’ wife to convey green, friendly and inviting, and is wrapped in wood to give a warmer and richer feel to the outsized structure. Getting into the dispensary requires only a driver’s license and being 21+, and the experience of walking into this store feels a lot more like going to Apple than anything lowbrow or clandestine. There’s a wooden sculpture by a local artist, and the bright and shiny blue and green dots shaped as in a wave on the walls in one corner of the large and well-lit room, by another local artist, echo the logo, set a calm mood, and add to the boutiquey-ness of the whole place. The complete range of product samples are in glass display cases, and there are plenty of pleasant folks working behind the counter who are friendly and informative, and only take customers on a one-on-one basis.

For any pothead, stepping up to the counter at The Pass to purchase marijuana legally - is like being a kid in a candy store. Though my saleswoman, Kate, told me that most people buy an ounce of one type of product or another, she patiently explained how customers can mix products, like, for instance, a quarter of an ounce of flower, four pre-rolled joints with a value of about 1 gram each, and a couple of containers with ten 5-milligram gummies in each, before hitting the combined one ounce limit. They had every type of marijuana one could imagine, including sativas (keep you up), indicas (put you to sleep), and hybrids, and in attractive The Pass branded packaging, offered competitively alongside maybe a dozen other curated Massachusetts-sourced brands. It’s interesting to note that, for purposes of legal compliance, a gram is a gram, and so products with higher THC levels typically sell for higher prices. On the high end, an ounce of premium flower can cost about $400, but an ounce of what have become the less expensive edible alternative can be secured for about $150. Kate explained that with edibles, “The sativa/indica mix is somewhat less important; when you smoke, the THC goes directly to your bloodstream, but when you eat edibles, the effects of indica vs. sativa are just not as prominent because the THC is processed through the liver and the effects are more melded.” For foodies, it can be as much about the flavor as the potency, and there were plenty of exotic flavored gummies and candies, like Apple Martini, Sour Grape, Pina Colada and Peach, and a few different chocolates, to choose from.

But my tour of The Pass was just beginning; as visiting media, I was scheduled for a back-of-the-house behindthe-scenes look at The Pass’ vertical operation, including a series of vegitative rooms, a series of indoor grow rooms , the raw product storage room, a testing laboratory, a large greenhouse, an area for making extracts and edibles, and an area for packaging and labeling. This is botanical science, and Pete Steimer, the Director of Cultivation at The Pass, who gave me a complete walk-through on the operation, is an experienced Grower with a degree in Plant Sciences. Entry into growing areas, and particularly during the cloning stages, is severely restricted, to avoid the introduction of foreign bacteria and other agents. Mold is a constant threat. Everywhere is well lit, clean, and the clear result of a whole lot of planning and engineering.

The light cycles are manipulated for optimum growth and to induce flowering of the plants.

Grow, trim and harvest schedules are maintained as precisely as mother nature, even inside the buildings, will allow. Every single plant is tagged and bar coded so the State can oversee its growth, measure its potency and purity, and tax its production...and each product sold is labeled with State-required notices and information, including details on the type and potency of the cannabinoid profile.

Although I’m sure a lot of my friends would have been ‘high’ to have seen all that marijuana growing in one place - and without having to worry about getting busted for being there - as a business school grad and entrepreneur, I was really struck by: how special each of Berkshire Mountain Distillers and The Pass are as separate businesses; how many aspects of their business are similar, and; how the law makes the alcohol and marijuana businesses so different from each other, and from most other businesses. It’s ‘green’-to-’gold’ in both businesses. Ingeniously converting ‘green’ farmed produce into highly valued consumables, Chris is part farmer, part scientist, part producer, part manufacturer, part marketer, and a whole lot of a made-in-the-U.S.A., grass-roots-of-the-community, good old fashioned businessman.

Next stop, the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, where the best-ever illustrator Rockwell, born 1894, actually lived and painted in a house on the property until his death in 1978. It’s only about a 20 minute drive from The Pass, and comes up even before you get to downtown Stockbridge. The lower floor of the Museum has a gallery with all 323 of Rockwell’s The Saturday Evening Post covers, dating from 1916 to 1963, and some really good videography and physical displays about Rockwell’s life and life’s work, and the really interesting method he had of photographing local real-life folk as models for the characters in his paintings. The upper floor features: a substantial collection of Rockwell’s oil paintings, with the classic 1958 “The Runaway” (depicting a police man and a young runaway boy at a soda fountain counter), and the iconic 1964 “The Problem We All Live With” (depicting U.S. Marshals escorting a six-year-old Black girl to a first day of school in Louisiana - six years after Brown v. Board of Education made desegregation the law of the Nation in 1954), among them, and; a display of Rockwell’s large “Four Freedoms” posters, “Freedom of Speech”, “Freedom to Worship”, “Freedom from Want”, and “Freedom From Fear”, done in 1943 and inspired by President Roosevelt’s address to Congress, they were published in the Saturday Evening Post with essays interpreting each freedom, and proved enormously popular. A touring exhibit of the “Four Freedoms” sponsored by the U.S. Treasury raised more than $130M (in 1943 dollars!) through the sale of war bonds. I lingered in front of almost every painting, reading the interesting history and Rockwell’s intention with each work, and realized how much, without my realizing it before, Rockwell’s work had informed my view - and the world’s view - of a big part of the 20th Century.

Feeling really good about the dose of culture, I thought about stopping over at nearby Chesterwood, the home and studio of Daniel Chester French, who sculpted the Lincoln Memorial, to see the large cast they have of the Memorial and the studio where French created it. But google revealed Chesterwood was closed, so I headed straight into town, and pulled up in front of the Red Lion Inn. This classic New England-style inn, dating as far back as 1773, with its iconic red-awninged white front porch, has been Stockbridge’s mainstay since current owner Sarah Eustis’ grandparents bought the Inn in 1968 and started to put it in its current prototypically charming form. I checked in early, even for the early dinner reservation Sarah had arranged for me, went up to the room and cleaned up for dinner, and made some phone calls sitting in a comfy chair and looking out the window at the wintry downtown Stockbridge scene. I chose a relatively light dinner from a menu that has the whole range of American fare, and had the New England clam chowder and the cider braised pork shank glazed with a dijon pan jus, served over winter vegetable risotto and braised baby kale... and for desert, a warm brown sugar cake with salted caramel and coffee ice cream. Everything was delicious, and that, coupled with the terrific service in the lovely traditional dining room, made me note that I’d definitely be back to the Red Lion Inn.

I was back in Pound Ridge the next morning in less than two hours.

Although I had chosen to have the night at the Red Lion Inn, if I planned it out and left in the morning, I could have easily made it up to Sheffield, stopped at the Berkshire Mountain Distillery and The Pass, gone to the Norman Rockwell Museum, maybe checked out Chesterfield, or even arranged a spa treatment at the nearby Canyon Ranch or Miraval resorts, and made it home in a reasonable and very enjoyable day trip.