Absolutely wonderful place to visit. I was here as part of a Yelp event, so the person giving us the Distillery tour was chef and co-owner John Howie, which I imagine doesn't happen as often, but the rest of it seemed to be what you would experience any other time here at Wildwood, which is excellence.
We started off in the Tasting Room, where Chef Howie discussed the process of distillation and what goes into it. He described how many awards their products have learned recently, which was very impressive. We then went through the Distillery, where he told us all sorts of things about the process and showed us how it is done. I'm not much of a drinker and I'm not much of a liquor snob, but I found this really fascinating and I found his passion for distillation to be infectious.
The tour itself took about 30 minutes, then it was on to the sampling part of the tour, the happiest part of all! We were given, in my opinion, rather generous pours of each gin and the vodka they produce, as well as the whiskey. In this case, they were sold out of the Dark Door whisky but Chef Howie was kind enough to bring his own personal bottle to the tasting so we could try it. I imagine that's not very common, but if you ever have the opportunity to try this whiskey, you should because it was smooth as butter and had plenty of amazing flavor and caramel notes. (Point of confession: This is coming from someone who can't stand Jack Daniels.)
Their Kur gin, the most popular and best for cocktails, made the strongest impression on me, especially after we were invited to try it in a Negroni. Smooth as butter! I bought a bottle on site. Most of the bottles are around $30 a piece before tax. I expected them to be even more expensive considering how many awards they have won and how good they were but thankfully they kept it in a more reasonable price range. (The Dark Door whiskey is $50, when available.) While you can buy their gin and vodka in Whole Foods or Total Wine, it's fun to buy it at Wildwood Spirits because you can sample it first. Where else can you do that?
I will be back and I'll be bringing my friends. read more