John T. Edge on Prichard's Distillery

[Dave the Cook]

An informative piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (here, free registration required), Edge talks to once-and-always Alabamian LeNell Smothers (proprietress of LeNell's: A Wine and Spirits Boutique in Red Hook), then heads south to profile Phil Prichard:

"Our first rum went in barrels in 1999," Prichard says as he troops from the paint-stripped wooden schoolhouse that serves as his office, through the basketball gymnasium that is his warehouse, to what might best be described as a shed out back where he works a copper pot still. "We wanted to make traditional American rum. The idea wasn't to run Bacardi out of business.

"I just figured that if we made something hand-distilled and hand-bottled, people would pay more for quality," says the man whose products are sold in 30 states. His goods — an amber-hued rum that spends three years in charred oak barrels and recalls a young French brandy, and an unaged white rum that smacks of butterscotch Lifesavers — make strong arguments for those possibilities.

Along the way, Edge finds time for Elmer T. Lee (Blanton's) and Julian Van Winkle (Pappy Van Winkle) and investigates a new generation of Southern spirits, few of which recall moonshine:

Firefly Vodka, sold out of Charleston, S.C., is distilled in Florida, where it's flavored with wine fermented from Lowcountry-grown muscadines. McKendric Mesquite-Mellowed Whiskey claims a birthplace in Texas but relies on a charcoal filtration and flavoring process popularized in Tennessee. Clyde May's Conecuh Ridge Alabama Style Whiskey is distilled in Kentucky and cut with spring water trucked in from somewhere southeast of Montgomery.

"I've got a bunch of Mennonites over in Finger [Tenn.] who want to sell me sorghum molasses," Prichard says as he taps a barrel, transferring an experimental rum to a beaker, then to a snifter. "That would close the loop." That also might change how he markets his products. If Prichard gets his way, the coil on his still will drip not with great rum made in Tennessee, but great Tennessee rum.

. . . so far the closest Prichard has come to making a truly local spirit may have been when he ran a private bottling of Volvka Vodka, distilled from castoff potato starch sourced at the nearby Frito Lay potato chip plant.

Some of these concepts ring hollow (water from Montgomery?) and Edge himself says, "New Southern spirits now debut with some frequency. Many aim for terroir, for geographical and cultural specificity, but settle for solutions that are, at best, imperfect, at worst, gimmicky." Still, sorghum rum sounds interesting, and muscadine-vodka might be worth a try. Mesquite-mellowed whiskey . . . not so sure.