Lex Anteinternet: Is Beer the Most Distributist Product Ever? Hey, what about whiskey (and other distilled beverages)?

A bottle of "double cask" Wyoming Whiskey, which is Wyoming Whiskey that's also been partially aged in a sherry cask.

Here's an item I just posted, all about local beers:

Lex Anteinternet: Is Beer the Most Distributist Product Ever?: Eh? Okay, let's start off with a definition refresher, as for many folks the term "Distributist" is a mystery. ...

Several years ago here, I posted an item on whiskey that featured a photograph of a bottle of Wyoming Whiskey:

The Rebirth Of Rye Whiskey And Nostalgia For 'The Good Stuff' & Beer and Prohibition.

Things have really changed since then.  Like breweries, distilleries are popping up all over.  Even locally, to my amazement.

Wyoming Whiskey was a new offering at the time, and was advertised as a bourbon comparable to Maker's Mark.  Frankly, I didn't care much for it, but I'm not a huge whiskey fan.  Inside word is that its much improved since then and I did buy a bottle of it as a gift for somebody the other day and, yes, it was much better than I recalled.

But it certainly isn't alone anymore.

Actually it wasn't even then.

Before we move on from Wyoming Whiskey, which as noted now has a reputation as being much improved as noted, let's note something on the Distributist angle to this.

As probably everyone knows, Wyoming Whiskey is owned by the Mead family.  It isn't employee owned or anything, so it doesn't really fit the model perfectly and its certainly not in the same category in regards to that as Casper's Skull Tree Brewery or Ft. Collin's Fat Tire Brewery, but an interesting thing about it is that it was formed as the Mead's had more corn than they knew what to do with.

Plowing a corn field in which last years cut stocks are visible.  1906.

Corn is the basic constituent of bourbon and sour mash, the archetypal American whiskeys which are notable in that regard as it distinguishes them from the whiskeys of the British Isles, where whiskey got its start (Scotch and Irish Whiskey are rye whiskeys).  Bourbon, which bears that name for reasons I know not of, got rolling as Appalachian farmers, mostly descendants of the Scots and Scots Irish at first, didn't know what to do with their corn surplus so they distilled it.  The Mead's took the same approach.  So they do provide an example of a farming family with a local product that made it into another local product.  If not a great example of subsidiarity, it's sort of one.

Anyhow, there was already the Koltiska Distillery in Sheridan Wyoming when Wyoming Whiskey got up and rolling and which was making an assortment of hard alcohols.  I've never tried it and I've never even seen it in anyone's home for that matter. But it was around then and still is now.  In fairness to my original post, it doesn't distill a whiskey and it specializes in liqueurs, although it now distills a vodka.

Vodka was the original product of Backwards Distillery, a small distillery that got up in running in Mills Wyoming and which is owned and operated all by immediate  members of the same family.  I was skeptical that the small distillery would make it at first, but the collection of people who own it and work there proved to have a real business head as its first product, vodka, was its choice simply because its easy to make correctly.  It turns out that they always intended to offer a whiskey and they've been aging a batch for some time.  According to the early press on it, the constituents are unique so it can't be classified as a bourbon or rye, etc., but is something else. American Whiskey is what they're calling it.  Based on what I read, it features corn and wheat.  Maybe wheat has been used in other whiskeys (I know its been used in vodkas, and in fact is what vodkas are normally made of), but if so, I've never heard of that.

This is interesting in and of itself as they've not only successful produced an aged whiskey as a very small outfit, they've done it under the wire so that not much was known about it as they were doing it (they also started distilling gin).  I don't like vodka as a rule (and I don't like bourbon really either) but the one and only occasion I had Backwards vodka it was actually really good.  Since then I've had a high quality Russian vodka brought back from Russia by a friend on a single occasion and I have to note that it was good also, so my opinion on vodka may be based on bad vodkas, which if that is true, would include nearly ever vodka.  Anyhow, it'll be interesting to see what their American Whiskey is like.

A page out of the same book might be found in Jackson Hole Still Works, which is a distillery in Jackson Hole that produces vodka and gin, which seem to be the starter hard alcohols for distilleries. Their web site indicates that they might have whiskey on the horizon.  The company was started by two friends and they note that they use all local products.  As there's no constituents grown in the immediate Jackson's Hole area, they importing corn from Byron and Powell, which means they are benefiting local farmers within the state. They emphasize, in a subsidiarity sort of way, that they're committed to environmental and local causes, and all of their spent grain is donated for animal feed to a local livestock producer and a further emphasis on having a low carbon footprint.

They aren't the only Jackson's Hole distiller, however, and a Grand Teton Distillery also is up and running in Jackson although it gives its address as Driggs Idaho.  It also produces its products, including vodka and bourbon, from local constituents, advertising that nothing comes from more than 25 miles away.  It bottles potato vodka, which for an Idaho distillery, makes particular sense.

There was, until this past July, a Wojtek Distillery in Laramie, which I don't know anything about other than that the Polish sounding distillery was owned by Polish descendants there who specialized in Polish distilled beverages, including something called Vazoonka.  I'm clueless about Vazoonka, but Laramie, while a college town, isn't a giant city (20,000 souls).  It briefly had a distillery of its own, but one that didn't produce whiskey (which is okay by me).  It shared space with a winery, but when it shut down it indicated that it's "parent company had sold" and I note that the winery it was indicated as being associated with apparently no longer exists.  It promised to reopen soon, but I can't see that it has yet.

The individual that started Wojtek Distillery is apparently from an Albany County ranch family, which if so gives us another sort of Mead like example, although I know nothing else about this operation.  I lived in high altitude Albany County for a little over six years and I saw very little in the way of crop agriculture while there, although there's a little in the Centennial Valley region.  Given that, I'd be surprised if they're raising whatever the constituents for these products are, but I don't know that or anything else about their operation.  They believe that they are the only producers of Vazoonka outside of Poland, or rather were, I suppose.  Whatever that beverage is, I'd note, it's so obscure that I can't even find a Wikipedia entry for it.

Anyhow, this is a really interesting trend.  I've been surprised by the explosion of local breweries, and further surprised when at least one, Skull Tree, dedicated itself to acquiring its constituents locally. Distilleries surprised me even more, and then to find at least three of them dedicating themselves to using local constituents in a really dedicated way, and one of them, Jackson Hole Still Works, going even further in that in their community involvement, is really remarkable.

So we're seeing local products in this area competing with something that only a few years ago was very much headed in the other way. And now some of them are dedicated to using local constituents.

Interesting.  And. . .interesting model for other areas?