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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhiskey Business
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/whiskey-business/309192/?mf8juw
Ernest Scarano produces 100 gallons of rye whiskey in a yearroughly what a big producer spills in an afternoon. (Chris Langer)
The Ernest Scarano Distillery is located in a 120-year-old barn outside Fremont, Ohio, a town of about 17,000 thats home to several cutlery companies and a ketchup factory. When I visited in the fall, I noticed that the open barn door had a chain hung across it with a sign reading Bonded Area. Ernest Scarano, the owner and sole employee, told me that he needed to see my ID before I could come in. The bonded area is for the feds, he explained, as if the web of state and federal regulations governing liquor production were the most natural thing in the world. The permitted area for the state of Ohio is the entire barn. I fished out my drivers license, and while he logged my information into a notebook, I admired the quiet emptiness of the surrounding cornfields. I felt like a bit player in a film about some rural bureaucratic dystopia.
In the early 19th century, some 14,000 distilleries across America were merrily operating, sending up little dogwood-blossom puffs of smoke in the hills and imbuing cities with the aroma of fermenting grain. Then came Prohibition. Nearly everyone shuttered in 1920, and few returned after Repeal in 1933a generation of skilled distillers had been skipped, and the new distribution channels established by Congress favored large producers. Big Liquor elbowed its way up to the bar, and smaller distillers couldnt find a seat.Eight decades later, micro-distilling is making a comeback: dozens of new small-scale producers fire up every year, fueled by a do-it-yourself culture, their hopes in many cases hitched to the locovore movement. At the end of last year, some 860 distillers held federal licenses.Id sought out the Ernest Scarano Distillery because it was the smallest commercial distillery Id heard of, and I was curious about the mechanics and economics of such micro production.
Scaranos business plan calls for producing about 100 gallons of rye whiskey every year, or roughly what a large liquor producer spills in an afternoon. Scarano, a 60-year-old with a neatly trimmed gray beard, has studied theology, worked for the Detroit diocese, and owned a telephone-installation business. When he decided he was getting too old for 40-foot ladders, he opened a small shop called Mantiques. (Classic guy stuff, he said, such as antique tools, vintage chain-gang outfits, and old well pumps. No teacups or anything.) Inspired by a rye hed tasted a few years earlier, he took up distilling on the side. Ive had four or five careers in my life, he told me, and I wanted one more.
Craft distillers not only need to be knowledgeable in such arcane matters as the esoteric habits of yeast and the miraculous properties of copper; they also must be deft in navigating the complex regulatory geography. (As I once heard a tour guide at the Wild Turkey distillery explain: How do you make bourbon? You take some moonshine, put it in a barrel, and add a bunch of federal regulations.)
hmmmm...made in america!
http://www.esdistillery.com/
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Whiskey Business (Original Post)
xchrom
Jan 2013
OP
badhair77
(4,220 posts)1. Thanks for posting this.
It's great to see small businesses starting and distilling is of particular interest to me.
corkhead
(6,119 posts)2. oooh, within driving distance. I'll have to check it out the next time I am out that way.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)3. give us a review! nt