Bourbon tasting to mark distillery anniversary

By MEGHAN PIERCE
Union Leader Correspondent

WINCHESTER — The New England Sweetwater Farm & Distillery is celebrating the first anniversary of its distillery and tasting room Saturday on Main Street — an event that will coincide with the Winchester Pickle Festival.

The town’s celebration of the pickle is nearly 20 years old and is planned from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. up and down Main Street.

Distillery owners Robert and Patti Spruill are celebrating that milestone by cracking open a barrel of pickles that they stocked six months ago. “Bourbon-barrel aged pickles in amazing pickle brine that’s slightly flavored with bourbon,” Patti explained.

The pickles will be free on a first-come, first-served basis, they said.

At New England Sweetwater Farm & Distillery, Saturday will be all about their specialties. The first anniversary Clark and Chesterfield Whiskey Bourbon will be for sale Saturday in the tasting room. The bourbon went on sale Friday, but already half of the limited edition bourbon had been reserved by customers.

“We put up a barrel when we first got our license to manufacture here, and we’ve been open a year,” Robert said. “So it’s the rarest bourbon in America.”

The Boston couple started visiting Winchester in 2001 when Robert’s parents bought a farm in town.

When his parents died they inherited the farm, and Robert soon started hatching a plan to make whiskey in the farm’s barn.

“It’s like a hobby out of control, and it morphed into a midlife crisis, and thankfully I got my wife to go along with it,” Robert said. “She wouldn’t have liked motorcycles or anything like that. I told her if it went bad, at least we’d have a bottle of liquor — and she agreed.”

Government regulators said the barn was too close to the house, so the couple bought a condemned 1860 building on Main Street and gave it a new life. The couple also bought the buildings on either side of Main Street. One is an apartment building, and the other is a building under renovation they plan to rent out.

“I think people are generally just happy to see Main Street improved,” Patti said.

Robert still has his “day job” as a professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches directing for film and television.

Because their whiskey recipe would take time to perfect and age, they diversified in the meantime, making vodka with local apples and potatoes.

“We started the whole thing because we wanted to be amazing whisky makers. So that’s really our goal, but that’s going to take a long time — to age it — you can’t rush that,” she said. “We really wanted to do something that embodies New England without doing maple or blueberries.”

So they decided to make vodka out of apples and potatoes.

There are also apple orchards across the region they can buy their apples from, as well as potatoes farmers.

Robert focused on making a smooth, sip-able vodka that doesn’t smell like rubbing alcohol. You can buy an expensive bottle of vodka, and it still smells like rubbing alcohol, he said.

“It’s much better to make a cocktail if you are not trying to hide the rubbing alcohol,” he said.

Using their vodka as a base, they also started making gin.

“We also grow tons of juniper trees and have tons of juniper berries on the farm, so we decided to make a gin,” Patti said.

But why stop at gin. The couple also started making a rum named Kingfish, after the “ginormous” snapping turtle that lives in the Ashuelot River that runs behind the distillery building.

Like their Kingfish Rum they like to keep the names of their spirits local — Ashuelot Vodka, Ashuelot Gin, Monadnock Moonshine, Clark and Chesterfield Whiskey and Clark and Chesterfield Whiskey Bourbon — and for $5 you can taste each one in the tasting room.

Being the only distillery in Cheshire County — and the first since prohibition — and with their focus on local ingredients, Patti said people who want to buy local can now buy their alcohol local.

“We’ve been around a year. I think we’ve proven we’re going to be around for a while, and I think we’ve proven we make a good quality product and it’s a win-win — you are keeping your dollars here in New Hampshire,” she said.

Fall tasting room hours are noon to 5 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. You can find them online at www.newenglandsweetwater.com.

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