5 minute read
drift restaurant opens at French lick wine & spirits
Drift Restaurant
Opens at French Lick Wine & Spirits
story by Glenda Winders
Headed to the French Lick area to play golf, luxuriate at a spa or try your luck at the casino? Then you’ll for sure want to make room on your itinerary for another spot – French Lick Winery and Spirits. You’ll also want to try out the new restaurant on its premises, Drift, which offers a “coastal Italian experience.” The winery, founded in 1995, is one of nine that make up the Uplands Wine Trail, a special designation for wineries in Indiana’s first American Viticulture Area (AVA). Its accompanying restaurant is brand-new.
The winery started out in French Lick’s historic Beechwood Mansion, once the home of Charles Ed Ballard, a wealthy local entrepreneur in the early 20th century.
“That first year they made 600 gallons of wine,” said Laurelin Doty, director of operations. “Last year we made 64,000. We’ve come a long way.”
She joined the business when she married head winemaker Nick, who worked alongside his parents, founders John and Kim, and brother Aaron – also a winemaker. The family grows some of their own grapes in a small vineyard on a farm that has been passed down through five generations of women in Kim’s family and was named a Hoosier Homestead farm in 2015.
“The wines we make from those grapes are tasting-room-only wines,” Laurelin said. “They are small batches from a small vineyard, so we don’t have enough to distribute.”
In 1995 there were only 10 wineries in Indiana. French Lick Winery opened in the basement of Beechwood Mansion.
The farm was passed down, uniquely, from female to female.
She said they produce wines that range from semi-dry to semi-sweet but concentrate on the majority of their customers who prefer sweeter wines. This year, however, Nick launched the drier Winemaker’s Cut label to commemorate their 25th anniversary, which they’re celebrating a year late because of the COVID pandemic. The blackberry batch tastes like eating a blackberry fresh off the vine, she said, and plans for next year’s cherry vintage are already underway.
In 2005 the operation moved to an old Kimball piano factory in West Baden. Now the tasting room is in front with wine production in the back — and a whole lot more is happening there, too.
In 2016 they opened a distillery in the same building. Now they also grow wheat and corn on the family homestead land that they use in some of their distilling products. The heirloom corn, for example, goes into
The distillery focuses on four pillars of distilling, bourbons, brandy, botanical spirits, and American whiskey.
small batches of heirloom bourbon, but products also range to brandy, vodka, gin and more.
Tours of the distillery, which require reservations, are on offer Monday through Friday at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. and sometimes on Saturdays. They include a 20- to 30-minute tour that shows how the products are made and ends with a tasting of either wine or spirits. Guests get to take home a souvenir snifter.
The Dotys had operated a restaurant, the Vintage Café, along with the winery but closed it so they could concentrate on wine and spirits production. Jarrid Davis and his partners, already owners of the West Baden Bagel Bistro and Stout’s Pub just a few blocks away, hadn’t been planning to open another restaurant, but the vacancy caused them to change their minds.
Spirits of French Lick motto is simple, “Respect the Grain”.
“It was more about trying to preserve what the community already had,” Davis said. “The Vintage Café was one of the only more upscale options for locals, and part of the idea was also to preserve jobs in the valley. This is a small town. These aren’t a bunch of faceless people to us. These are people we know. It was a community decision for us.”
They hired Chef Brett Walters, whose experience runs deep in the area, and made a plan to continue the idea of an Italian restaurant but with some twists.
“We wanted to pay homage to what was there before,” Davis said, “but we didn’t want to just copy and paste what they had done. We wanted to create our own identity in the new space.” The result was a menu that offers several pasta options but also includes dishes found along the Italian coast, such as swordfish and quail. They use ingredients that local farmers bring to the Lost River Market in Paoli, and they change the menu seasonally, always working collaboratively with the winery.
The result was a menu that offers several pasta options but also includes dishes found along the Italian coast, such as swordfish and quail. They use ingredients that local farmers bring to the Lost River Market in Paoli, and they change the menu seasonally, always working collaboratively with the winery.
“We are able to highlight their products through pairings, and we keep them in mind as we create the menu,” Davis said. “One of our focuses is making sure that we’re complementing what they do. The marriage with the French Lick Winery has been a wonderful thing.”
In 2016, the Klingle-Doty family farm was given the Hoosier Homestead award by the Indiana State Department of Agriculture.
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