A certain kind of alchemy occurs when everything aligns in the production of rum—ingredients, expressive fermentation, maturation—but the story and the “why” behind great rum is another element that can’t be forgotten. Maggie Campbell and Chaz Vest of American Cane (https://www.americancane.com) are deeply focused on those components that make for interesting rum, driven to tell the broader history of rum production in America—even as they build production capacity and write up their own small p...
Jun 24, 2025•53 min
The distilling traditions we enjoy today are often the product of centuries of trial and error from past generations of makers, with ingredients carefully developed for efficiency and effectiveness in given locales. It’s hard to separate the spirit from the place that it comes from because often the very character of that spirit is a result of what grows, what fuels are accessible, and what ferments to a degree that matches the effort involved in extracting sugars. In Mexico and the southwestern...
Jun 10, 2025•1 hr 5 min
For Tyler Glasser of Stranahan’s, (https://stranahans.com) problem solving and creative exploration are best begun with a holistic view, borne from perspectives gained working across the various roles within a distillery. Through his current role as plant operations administrator, he’s gained an appreciation for the part that planning, forecasting, and procurement play in enabling distillers and blenders to produce and construct great spirits, as creating products at the scale of Stranahan’s req...
May 28, 2025•55 min
In this episode focused on distilling in Florida—host Sydney Jones’ old stomping grounds—she reconnects with industry friends Ric deMontmollin and Zack Wildrick from St. Augustine Distillery (https://www.staugustinedistillery.com) and City Gate Spirits (https://www.citygatespirits.com/home). The high-heat, high-humidity environment there poses challenges for barrel aging St. Augustine’s whiskey, while the flavored moonshines of City Gate aim to evoke experiential memories for both the locals and...
May 14, 2025•1 hr 3 min
Sara Sergent, master distiller for Alpine Distilling (https://www.alpinedistilling.com) in Park City, Utah, has garnered countless accolades over her career, and today she works with some of the biggest names in the culinary world to bring their ideas to life, while also creating bespoke and diverse spirit expressions for guests at their social club. If there’s an ingredient out there, she’s probably tried it and worked through how it expresses best through distilling. Through the course of this...
Apr 29, 2025•50 min
Bigger world events have a way of bringing clarity and focus to individual goals, and for Bob Dillon of Dismal Harmony, (https://www.dismalharmony.com) the COVID pandemic gave him just the push he needed to change careers and explore the technical and creative side of craft distilling. Now, from his outpost in Morristown, New Jersey, he’s focused on both serving boundary-pushing cocktails and creating the spirits to make them possible. A recent Best in Show award for his Vidisha’s Masala liqueur...
Apr 16, 2025•1 hr 5 min
Storytelling is in Devon Trevathan’s blood, and whether she’s distilling unique spirits in Austria, New Orleans, or Australia, or writing about the inspiring technical work of peers for articles for Spirits & Distilling, she remains focused on the dual side of making—pushing outside of one’s comfort zone and finding truth. Through Liba Spirits (https://libaspirits.com), she pursues a nomadic approach, producing spirits with their own stories at often far-flung locales. And with Trovador Rum ...
Apr 01, 2025•1 hr 2 min
The process of making rum is rife with lore, but for Brett Steigerwaldt of Lyon Rum (https://www.lyonrum.com) in St. Michael’s, Maryland, breaking down the variables and understanding the impacts of each factor—ingredients, fermentation, distillation, finishing—leads to more refined expression. In this episode, Steigerwaldt and host Sydney Jones discuss: double pot distillation’s impact on flavor and texture in finished rum distilling various iterations of white and dark rum as well as finishing...
Mar 18, 2025•57 min
Ashley Barnes, master blender at the Blending House, (https://www.theblendinghouse.com) joins host Molly Troupe for an in-depth discussion of the scientific and sensorial approaches to building characterful blends. A former pharmaceutical quality chemist, Barnes was recruited by Buffalo Trace, later moved on to Four Roses, and has worked with (and learned from) some of the greats in the bourbon world. Now, at the Blending House, she works with nondistilling producers to carefully age and blend f...
Mar 04, 2025•52 min
Caley Shoemaker got her start in whiskey at Denver’s Stranahan’s and went on to distill at Hanger One in Southern California before launching her own distillery, As Above, So Below (https://aasbdistillery.com) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2021. Now, from her home base on the edge of the mountains in a state nicknamed “The Land of Enchantment,” she’s summoning strong spirits with their own particular swagger. In this episode, host Sydney Jones and Shoemaker discuss: • Creating vodka, gin, whiskey,...
Feb 19, 2025•1 hr 2 min
Tequila and mezcal are top of mind when you think “agave,” but Gian Nelson is working to change that assumption. For the past few years, working through his brand Jano Spirits (https://www.janospirits.com), he has partnered with growers who cultivate California agave—a much larger cousin of the classic Blue Weber agave used in tequila—to better understand what it takes to cultivate agave plants that translate into fine spirits. In this episode, Nelson and host Molly Troupe discuss: differences i...
Feb 04, 2025•48 min
Founded in 2015, Baltimore Spirits is celebrating a decade of distilling in Charm City. Led by cofounder and head distiller Eli Breitburg-Smith, that run has played a notable role in the craft revival of American rye. Their Epoch Reserve has won multiple double golds at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, more recently landing on Fred Minnick’s Top 100 list of American whiskeys in 2024. In this episode, hosted by Sydney Jones, Breitburg-Smith talks about how he got into distilling as a ...
Jan 22, 2025•57 min
Morgan McLachlan, the Los Angeles–based cofounder of Amass Spirits (https://amassgin.com) and Katy Perry’s nonalcoholic De Soi (https://drinkdesoi.com) brand, has a flair for theatrics that’s only fitting for someone who started her career as a camera operator for film and TV. Every nuanced performance is built on layers, some barely noticeable—but understanding the purpose of those creative choices is essential for McLachlan, as she constructs everything from gins and nonalcoholic spirits to fr...
Jan 08, 2025•48 min
Year one of the Spirits & Distilling podcast is in the books, and in this special year-end look back, hosts Sydney Jones and Molly Troupe recount some of their favorite conversations of 2024, discuss the dramatic changes in their own lives, muse on big issues of the past year like the TTB’s adoption of a definition for American Single Malt, and look at the big issues and conversations they’re focusing in on for the next year. Along the way, they discuss: refereeing between the two wolves ins...
Dec 24, 2024•1 hr 6 min
David Fisher’s love of spirits started with bartending in London and followed a winding path, eventually passing through pandemic-era New York City into sensory analysis and blending back home in Australia. Now the senior spirits blender at award-winning Archie Rose Distilling (https://archierose.com.au/) in Sydney, Fisher has one of the most respected noses in the business. In this discussion with host Molly Troupe, Fisher shares his thoughts on the importance of confidence to sensory and blend...
Dec 10, 2024•52 min
There aren’t many problems in whiskey that Sherrie Moore hasn’t tackled and solved. Over her 30+ years at Tennessee’s renowned Jack Daniel’s distillery, she’s worked in just about every role imaginable—from chemist and processing manager to barrel warehousing manager and, eventually, director of whiskey production. She’s since directed whiskey production for Nearest Green Distillery, and for the past few years she has expanded her scope to help smaller brands dial in processes, products, and ope...
Nov 26, 2024•57 min
Olivier Ward got his start in gin in the mid-oughts, working on projects for Hendricks, and the he hasn’t been able to shake the gin world since. The people, places, and processes captivate him, and building or telling those brand stories has been a major focus for the better part of the past two decades. As chief gin judge for the IWSC, he tastes thousands of gins in any given year and has a context for flavor and approaches that few possess. Now, with Everglow Spirits (https://everglowspirits....
Nov 13, 2024•1 hr 8 min
Whiskey Del Bac in Tucson, Arizona, has pursued a taste of place in its spirits since opening in 2011, using local mesquite wood instead of peat to smoke-dry malt for its single-malts. Head distiller and blender Mark Vierthaler—also the interim marketing director—joined the team in 2021, leading the production of what he calls the distillery’s “love letter to the Sonoran desert.” In this episode, Vierthaler joins host Sydney Jones to talk terroir, transparency, marketing, blending, and balancing...
Oct 30, 2024•59 min
Jackie Zykan of Hidden Barn (https://hiddenbarnwhiskey.com) and Oduoak (https://www.oduoak.com) can tell you what aromas and flavors she detects when she smells and tastes whiskey, but she’d rather not put it in terms that you can connect with. After all, if she tells you she gets almond, you’ll most likely perceive and focus on that almond. But as she says in the episode, “Who cares if you ... get almond or not? I don’t care. There is no wrong or right.” The spirited blender has strong opinions...
Oct 15, 2024•1 hr 12 min
Adam Spiegel is taking an approach akin to alchemy and applying it to distilling, turning something relatively worthless—excess capacity in the distillery—into gold. The result isn’t just contract distilling and business diversification—it’s room to continue pushing and learning with Corning & Company (https://www.corningandcompany.com), beyond the whiskey space that he pursued for the first decade of Sonoma Distilling (https://sonomadistillingcompany.com). In this episode, Spiegel touches o...
Oct 02, 2024•59 min
Chicago's Maplewood (https://maplewoodbrew.com) has made quite a name for themselves over the years in both the brewing and the distilling worlds. Four Great American Beer Festival medals, a couple of 99 ratings and one perfect 100 score (https://beerandbrewing.com/review/maplewood-brewing-company-barrel-aged-cuppa-vanilla-rye-1624047753) from the blind review panel at Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine®, and most recently a double gold for their Fat Pug single-malt whiskey at the San Francisco W...
Sep 18, 2024•1 hr 16 min
As blender and manager of blending operations for the blend-focused brand Barrell Craft Spirits, (https://www.barrellbourbon.com) Nic Christiansen’s job is to understand flavors, how they develop, and how they interact with each other to create harmonious wholes. In this episode, Christiansen and host Molly Troupe discuss: finding new avenues for flavor in blended whiskey building micro-blends that are then married through additional barrel conditioning the benefits and challenges of sourcing wh...
Sep 03, 2024•54 min
New York City’s Widow Jane Distillery (https://widowjane.com) may be one of the better known craft-spirits brands, with a relatively wide distribution footprint earned through the incredible reputation built by former distillers such as Lisa Wicker (hear her perspective on Episode 3 (https://spiritsanddistilling.com/cs-d-podcast-episode-3-lisa-wicker/)). Now, under the guidance of head distiller and blender Sienna Jevremov, the distillery continues to grow despite the functional challenge of pro...
Aug 20, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Brewer-turned-distiller Christian Krogstad launched House Spirits in the mid-‘00s with a focus on artisanal gin, but he had no idea the botanical spirit they pursued with passion would become one of the larger celebrity-owned-and-endorsed spirits in this recent wave of high-profile acquisitions. Tinkering with two partners—one a prominent bartender, the other a fellow distiller—their goal was to create a pre-Prohibition-style gin perfect for classic cocktails. But no recipes existed for those ea...
Aug 07, 2024•59 min
The modes that distillers operate in can vary wildly based on the goals of the business and the avenues for sales. While at the helm of Ghost Coast in Savannah, Georgia, Ken Klehm did it all—a law change allowed the distillery to sell cocktails as long as all the spirits were produced in-house, so Klehm distilled a wide range of spirits and liqueurs to stock the entire bar. Now, at the helm of 450 North Spirits (https://450northspirits.com)—a family-owned distillery, adjacent to the family’s bre...
Jul 25, 2024•58 min
The last decade and a half have been a whirlwind for Andy Nelson, as the discovery of a family distilling legacy led his brother Charlie and him to pursue and launch the Nelson's Green Brier Distillery to make Tennessee Whiskey the way his great-great-great grandfather did (with a few accomodations for modernity, of course). Along the way, they also launched Belle Meade Bourbon, sourcing and blending, with the requisite learning that that entailed. Now, after selling the majority stake in the di...
Jul 09, 2024•1 hr
Nicole Austin has spent time in distilleries around the world, but if there’s one thing she’s learned from producing at distilleries both tiny and very large, it’s that no single blending strategy works at every scale, for every product, or with each kind of spirit. Today, as director of George Dickel (https://www.georgedickel.com) and luxury American whiskey for Diageo, she has extensive tools at her disposal—from deep stocks of long-aged Tennessee whiskey to modern lab equipment. The nexus of ...
Jun 25, 2024•59 min
Fourteen years into her career at Clear Creek (https://www.hrdspirits.com/clear-creek-distillery) in Hood River, Oregon, Caitlin Bartlemay recently become master distiller at the respected craft producer. There, she continues to lead a small, hands-on team through seasons of distilling an array of whole-fruit brandies as well as McCarthy’s Oregon Single Malt—the first American craft single-malt whiskey. In this week’s episode, Bartlemay joins host Molly Troupe for a wide-ranging discussion that ...
Jun 12, 2024•1 hr 3 min
While Sydney Jones’ last turn in the host chair was an exit interview of sorts, this episode is her entrance interview with new boss, Heaven Hill (https://www.heavenhill.com) Master Distiller Conor O’Driscoll, as she settles into her new role as supervisor and technical lead for the under-construction $150M distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky. In this episode, O’Driscoll shares his insight gained from two decades of distilling for respected whiskey brands, and along the way touches on: Whiskey fer...
May 29, 2024•1 hr 7 min
In Andy Garrison’s mind, fruit brandies have historically been necessary byproducts of excess—fruit trees produce more food that could be consumed by their owners, so what better way to preserve their bounty than distilling the juice from the leftover fruit? Today, in the age of wide-scale commercial farming, that approach to adding or preserving value from one’s harvest is not an animating factor, and pressing and distilling juice from fruits is one of the most expensive ways to produce a spiri...
May 21, 2024•56 min
