Distilled in Vermont by Maggiolo Chris;Elliott - President of the Distilled Spirits Council of VT Jeremy;

Author:Maggiolo, Chris;Elliott - President of the Distilled Spirits Council of VT, Jeremy;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Old Route Two Spirits features a modular production space and unique, multi-wood barrels. Courtesy of Old Route Two Spirits.

Adam adds:

That’s kind of what I went for. In the gin, there’s juniper of course. There’s also lemon peel, lemon balm and lemongrass. Lemon peel obviously you can’t grow here, but we get balm and grass. The chamomile has hints of pineapple that it throws in there. Then the wildcard in the gin is the spilanthes. It was one that originally might give it another citrus kick, but when you distill it loses all flavor but retains a little Szechuan peppercorn property where it makes your mouth water just a little bit at the back when the sip is done. We’re very careful how we dose the gin with the spilanthes, but we think it gives it just a little something at the back.

In addition to the gin, Adam and Ryan produce a handful of aged rums. Adam explains:

With the rum, the difference is that we’re using custom barrels. The woods are all hand-selected by US Barrel in Plattsburgh. The staves are all oak, and then we are using cherry, maple, ash and oak heads. So we’re getting a lot of complexity at a young age. They’re virgin barrels, and we’re pulling on all those different types of woods that, I’m sure somebody’s done it, but we haven’t been able to find anybody. It’s a nice twist, a consistent twist, and it adds a lot.

As with gin research and development, barrel aging requires a lot of time and patience. While you may have an idea of what will happen to a spirit, results frequently vary. This is especially true when trailblazing a path with woods other than white oak.

He continues:

Initially, the concept of those four woods was that we were going to marry them all together and have a single rum. And for the first six months, that worked for our blending experiments. Originally, we thought we were going to take it out, blend and bottle after six months. But the trajectory of improvement of flavor was so good each month over month. So we decided at one year we’ll try it again, and that was the right call. It became a lot rounder and more sophisticated over a year. And we’ll keep going, but it will be a year minimum for now.

The results of their maturation experiments yielded two distinct rums in what is now known as Old Route Two’s Barrelhead Rum line: Cherrywood and Maple & Ash. The flavors produced by the cherrywood barrelheads, spicy like a rye whiskey, simply did not play well with the more subtle notes of maple and ash.

“The flavor just collapses and the spark goes out,” says Ryan. It’s really weird. It’s not that it clashes, but when you take [the cherrywood] out, everything is great. We started doing the other permutations and found that the maple and ash really complement each other well. So, I guess we have two rums.”

Old Route Two Spirits also

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