The other day, I had the pleasure of hosting Tom Cole, Marcia Likarish and Nellie Hill from Ironroot Republic Distillery on my front porch. Tom is the local brand ambassador for the distillery and a friend of mine. He contacted me and asked if I would like to meet Marcia, the Distillery Manager and Nellie, the National Sales Rep for the distillery. I invited them over for a drink and we had some interesting conversations on the porch. I thought I would share some of the topics here.

I started the visit by letting them taste Fountain Run Bourbon, which led to the first subject of interest – heirloom corn. Marcia has an interesting take on heirloom corn. It should be treated as a flavoring grain. Her example is the fact several distilleries are using Bloody Butcher corn and some people don’t like the taste of the whiskey made with that corn, but if you use just a little Bloody Butcher, say 20%, the flavor can complement the yellow Dent corn and make a better product. This reminds me of what Steve Beam told me about chocolate barley malt –a little goes a long way and too much can overpower the other flavors of the whiskey.

The next topic was barrel entry proof. Marcia stated that they have a barrel entry proof of 118, however the Texas climate (the distillery is in Dennison, Texas, north of Dallas/Fort Worth) is hot and aging whiskey quickly goes up in proof. They use a French brandy method of adjusting the proof as the whiskey ages by adding water to the barrel. They shoot for a goal of keeping the proof around the 118 mark. I like their whiskeys so it must be working. The added water, in my opinion, will help balance the wood tannins by extracting more wood sugars.

The Ironroot Republic Distillery is a pot still distillery that makes sweet mash whiskey. They cannot make enough whiskey to keep up with the demand so they supplement their pot still whiskey by purchasing barrels of Kentucky and Indiana whiskeys and marry the barrels to create a flavor profile they like and bottle it for the market. I did get a chance to taste a bottle of single barrel Bourbon that was 100% pot still whiskey made in Dennison. It was very good whiskey with some nice cherry and raspberry fruit notes that I really liked.

These were just a few of the subjects we discussed that day on the porch. I hope you enjoyed my sharing these topics with you.

bottle of whiskey on a porch

Photos Courtesy of Rosemary Miller