1 minute read
Nothing is Off the Table
When you’ve created legendary brands like Hendrick’s Gin and Sailor Jerry Rum, where do you go from there? In the case of Steven Grasse, you go to Tamworth, New Hampshire (population: less than 3,000), to open a craft distillery. It might seem an unlikely move, but not to Grasse.
“As a child, I spent each summer in the Lakes Region, and my fondest memories are from my summers in New Hampshire,” he recalls. “My family has history in the area, and I’ve always wanted my children to have those same memories, too.
“After launching Hendrick’s and Sailor Jerry, my next career goal was to open my own distillery, one that remained small in scale and focused on using locally sourced ingredients. I essentially wanted to build an experimental test kitchen where we could produce top-quality spirits from scratch, and bring that idea to a rural community as a way of creating jobs. Then I discovered Tamworth.”
Sitting between the Lakes Region and the White Mountains, Tamworth Distilling is surrounded by tasty ingredients and pristine water. And nothing is off-limits to an innovator like Grasse.
“One of the more popular releases has been our Black Trumpet Blueberry Cordial,” he says. “It’s our most widely distributed spirit, and it’s developed a cult following among top-tier mixologists in New York. It’s made with handpicked blueberries from the forest near our distillery and foraged black trumpet mushrooms. It’s the only spirit produced that uses mushrooms, too.”
Mushrooms in a spirit? It doesn’t stop there.
“We are always experimenting with unique ingredients out of the distillery,” Grasse notes. “Recently, we tested a goat milk liqueur that’s still being refined. Our production style is wilderness-to-bottle, and since we forage for most of our own ingredients, almost nothing is off the table in terms what we can do.”
By Mike Gerrard
