Scots Bring Whiskey Magic to Washington's Distillery
Master distillers from Scotland are stepping three centuries back in time to make single malt whiskey in the same place where George Washington produced his own liquid gold.
Using imported Scottish barley, they are creating the only 100 bottles of authentic single malt whiskey ever to come out of the founding father's Mount Vernon estate, south of the U.S. capital that bears his name.
"It's quite a thrill to be doing everything by hand," Bill Lumsden of the Glenmorangie Distillery told Agence France Presse after the last buckets of fermented mash were poured into the copper-pot stills.
"It's almost like stepping back in time to produce whiskey the way it was done 300 years ago," added John Campbell, of the Laphroaig Distillery, outside the fieldstone distillery that Washington built near his grist mill in 1799.
"It's almost like you've got to unlearn everything you've learned," agreed Andy Cant of the Cardhu Distillery. "It's a complete unknown, but I think that's probably half the fun of it."
Painstakingly reconstructed and reopened in 2007, the Mount Vernon distillery typically makes rye, and sometimes peach brandy, using Washington's own recipe, in five handcrafted stills heated by smokey wood fires.
In its time, it was the biggest distillery in the newborn United States. Today, it's representative of the more than 400 small "craft distilleries" that cater to a boutique clientele.
This week, however, will be the first time Mount Vernon has ever produced a barley-based single malt whiskey, a limited vintage to honor the Scottish farm manager who got a reluctant Washington into the whiskey business in the first place.
The plan calls for two days of distilling and redistilling, after which the resulting alcohol will be promptly poured into custom-made barrels -- made from wood previously used to age Kentucky bourbon -- to mature for three years.
"I'm expecting this to be quite rich and quite full-bodied," said Lumsden, who gleefully declared the first drops of 55-proof liquor gold to drip out of the stills to be "not at all unpleasant."
"We'll end up with 100 bottles that will get auctioned around the world," for charity, said Frank Coleman of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, an industry group that funded the rebuilding of Washington's distillery.
By way of comparison, Laphroaig produces 15 million bottles a year.
Proceeds will go to a number of charities, said Coleman, including the non-profit Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, which owns the sprawling plantation overlooking the Potomac River and keeps it open for tourists.
Washington, the hero of the Revolutionary War against British colonial rule, was nearing the end of his stint as the first US president when his farm manager James Anderson pitched the idea of a rye distillery.
Anderson was in the distilling business in his native Scotland prior to emigrating to America, and from his correspondence with Washington, he was clearly keen to get back into the business.
Wary at first, Washington canvassed the opinion of friends before agreeing to build the two-story distillery next to his long-established and very profitable grist mill that was grinding flour for export to Europe.
The distillery was completed in 1799, when it produced 11,000 gallons of rye whiskey with the help of six slaves. Washington died in December that year, but the distillery remained in operation until a fire in 1814.
"I think he would actually be proud of our efforts here," said Mount Vernon's master distiller, David Pickerell, who also oversees the WhistlePig Farm craft distillery in Vermont.
Source: Agence France Presse
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