This is the final entry about our last stop during our big Hudson Valley tour about a month ago. Earlier that day we visited the Vanderbilt Mansion Historic Site, the Val-Kil Cottage and Roosevelt Homes in Hyde Park and finally the Tuthilltown Spirits Distillery in Gardiner, New York. Tuthilltown Spirits makes small-batch, artisanal whiskeys and vodkas on a historic form about 2 hours north of New York City. If you live in the Northeast, you've probably seen their whiskey products, sold under the Hudson Whiskey label. Hudson Whiskey is a premium product, and priced to match. Their small, medicinal bottles of whiskey range in price from $42-55.
About that time the State of New York, eager to stimulate new businesses, relaxed the previously daunting licensing requirements for distilleries operating in the state. The cost of a license was dropped from $65,000 to $1,500, and Erenzo, with business partner Brian Lee, had the idea of creating a small, artisan distillery using locally grown ingredients. After much trial and error, the first batches of whiskey rolled off the lines a few years later and the business has been a runaway success since. Known for its whiskeys, the distillery also produces small batches of vodkas and other spirits that have a much faster cash-to-cash cycle (whiskey has to sit unproductively in those barrels for quite some time).
The business started small, but has grown explosively in the past few years. They've won numerous awards, and recently secured distribution deals to take their whiskeys around the world. Today the historic grist mill is a restaurant, called The Grist Mill, focusing on locally-sourced, farm-raised ingredients. We didn't eat at the restaurant, but the reviews have been terrific. Locals take pride in the Distillery's use of locally-sourced ingredients (everything is grown within 10 miles), and the fact this is the first distillery to open in New York since the end of Prohibition.
I won't explain the distillation process here, but basically corn goes in and whiskey comes out. Take the tour and they'll bring it all to life. What I found most interesting is that both owners are self-taught and had no previous experience making whiskey (one owned a climbing gym in Manhattan, and the other was an electrical engineer). You can read an interesting article about the owners and their struggles to start the business on a blog called Whiskey-Pages.
