I had the good fortune to be invited to a Journeyman Distillery Spirits tasting at Plum Market (thanks Robin!). The tasting was to be lead by one of their spirits ambassadors but there was some sort of mix-up and they sent on of the owners (Johanna) instead. Pretty good substitution, if you ask me.
Our host lead us through a quick tasting of all the spirits with notes on how to help taste all the obvious flavors. With everyone’s palette being different, there were even a few surprises that people found.
The eight offerings on the list is most of their product and everything that is carried by major liquor stores.
- Red Arrow Vodka
- Billberry Black Hearts Gin
- Road’s End Rum
- W.R. Whiskey
- Buggy Whip Wheat Whiskey
- Ravenswood Rye Whiskey
- Featherbone Bourbon Whiskey
- Silver Cross Whiskey
Besides the copious amounts of nibbles provided by Plum Market, I was really impressed with the spirits. The three that stood out the most were the following.
W.R. Whiskey is a white whiskey (not barrel aged) and I typically avoid them due to their harshness. I should obviously expand my palette as this was delicious. As Johanna said, this would be a great replacement for vodka when you want a more body.
The Bilberry Black Hearts Gin was a nice addition to the juniper. It gives it more of a berry taste and would work really well in floral or fruit based drinks. I grabbed a bottle of this after the tasting.
The other bottle I grabbed was the Silver Cross Whiskey. This is a whiskey that features equal parts corn, barley, wheat and rye. This really doesn’t make it any traditional whiskey we are familiar with and is quite good. Lish also liked this which is an added bonus.
Besides the tasting, we also got a history lesson about Journeyman Distillery as well as the area they are located in, Three Oaks, MI. At one time, Three Oaks was a major city in the US due to one of it’s major businessmen E.K. Warren who owned a corset and buggy whip factory. When corsets were all the rage, only rich women could afford them. E.K. discovered that a featherbone (basically a stripped feather) or spine of the feather could support a corset just as well as whale bone. This made corsets accessible to everyday women and made E.K. a fortune. The Journeyman Distillery is located in E.K.s old space.
There are a lot of references in the names of the spirits to the area; Featherbone Bourbon, Buggy Whip Wheat Whiskey, Red Arrow Vodka, etc.
Fast forward a week later and we decided to take the distillery tour. Lish and I were going to be on that side of the state and it looked like fun. Plus it was free!
The tour is about 45 minutes and includes spirit tasting at the end. We got to learn about the process of malting to fermentation to distilling to bottling. The place isn’t nearly as big as you think it would be and they get a lot done with just a few people. Bottling is still a very manual process right down to hand applying the labels.
The magic happens in their stills. They are beautiful works of art and, knowing the cost of copper, must have cost a pretty penny.
If a portion of the floor isn’t occupied by equipment or is a needed path for a pallet jack, then it houses barrels. These range from the bigger production whiskeys to the little barrels of experiments.
We got to smell the botanicals that go into the gin. All of us wanted to taste a bilberry but the ones on display were a bit on the old side. We were advised against it by our tour guide.
The tour wrapped in the tasting room. Since we just had a tasting at plum, we focused on some of the more rare spirits. This included the Humdinger Jalapeno Spirit, OCG Old Country Goodness bottled cocktail and the special edition Single Malt Whiskey. This is a program they are just starting. It will feature a whiskey from a different country each year on a limited bottling basis. For year one, they selected New Zealand and they only made 3,000 bottles.
There is also a great bar & mini-restaurant within the facility. Lish and I enjoyed a tomato salad along with a cheese and charcuterie plate with some cocktails of course. The cocktail menu was recently revised and I don’t think it is up on the website yet. But I had an old fashioned and another more creative drink…which I can’t remember.
I, of course, grabbed a bottle of the New Zealand Single Malt and am impressed with it. I look forward to their future offerings as well.
The two experiences were very fun and you can really tell the pride the owners and employees put into the product. I haven’t purchased a lot of journeyman in the past but I look forward to experimenting more. 3 bottles is a good start.
Budmo!