The Vodka Ivory Tower

I've been to a couple of distilleries for artisan liquors. The equipment always seems to be this mix of practical manly tanks and something Jules Verne dreamt up. Plus some barrels. It is laid out if to say, if all of this was equally shiney and fabulous looking, we would just be buying stuff to be pretty....not creating booze. Let's distract them with wood and chicken wire. Truth is, I would be a  suspicious if there wasn't a little McGuyvering quality to the place. Too perfect would look like a someone just went on a  really expensive shopping spree.

Lately, the word "artisan" is being thrown around like last years "Kindle." It is attached to everything these days from pizza at Dominos to Bagels at Dunkin Donuts.  The literal interpretation of the word means a lot in this industry though. There are "infusers" that some aficionados tend to turn their noses up at; companies who purchase large quantities of spirits from other facilities and insert different essences into them, making them flavored. To many of these producers, there is an artistry to creating the flavors that make them unique and they consider their creation an artisan product.  However,  many distillers don't acknowledge that it is genuinely making your own product if you don't start from the basics. They find  slapping a the label on a product that originated from elsewhere, sometimes even a different state that it professes to be a proud product of, is a questionable tactic. It is cheapened to them, easier, not truly "artisan." Their equipment isn't as big and creative and pretty.

The piece that I love the best is the vodka tower.  It looks like it could have swallowed Willy Wonka's Augustus Galloop but more beautiful, more copper and brass and glass. The ceilings have to be over 20 feet high to accommodate its necessary height. It literally towers over all of the other units of equipment and has portals running up the front. I assume that these are to look in, not to look out. It reminded me of the metal art pieces that a rich friend's dad had in his New York City loft apartment. Except I understood the purpose of this. Sort of.

Besides the vodka tower and all of that lovely copper, my favorite part of the distillery is the previously mentioned barrels. Barrels are just cool. I told My Doc that maybe some day I would sell the distillery success purchased Bentley (I don't dream half-assed) and I would start a cooperage to match his booze. Then I thought about it a little harder and realized you would have to know how to do things like weld and not set things on fire in order to do this.

Barrels smell good. Some go from one type of industry to the next, sold for the next purpose. An American Barrel holding bourbon can wind up holding scotch in Glasglow. They are good to sit on and when you saw them in half you can use them to plant large quantities of basil in  for when you make lots of pesto. They aren't complicated structures and have been around for centuries because they are very very useful, even important when it comes to keeping transported food products safe. A barrel is a statement of simple ingenuity, an idea that hasn't changed because it was so good from its start. It is wood and metal. Like its brother in the artisan crafts of a distillery the whiskey, it will be here hundreds of years ago from now, relatively unchanged with the exception of the individual imprint of its maker.

I look forward to the day that the copper and the wood and the glass and the grains have all arrived. The ingredients are poured, the electricity is turned on, the hums fill the air, the smells begin the process of aging into the odor we will all associate with our family's second home and money maker and we have really begun. So much of the money is there. So close I can see it.

Soon.