Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

August 15, 2012

Mainer revives family's 19th-century distillery

Ned Wight has long dreamed of resurrecting the family business, which started in the 1850s and flourished for a century ... with a timeout for a bump in the road called Prohibition.

By Meredith Goad mgoad@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

PORTLAND — Ned Wight dipped into the old Jim Beam barrel and pulled out a sample of rum.

It's not fully mature yet, and straight out of the barrel it's still too strong to drink neat. So he diluted the sample before offering a taste.

"I'm calling the rum a traditional New England-style rum, so it's molasses based, and matured in whiskey barrels," Wight said. "It kind of has this whiskey character to it from the barrel, just the similar flavors of the oak and vanilla and all that good stuff coming in. It's almost got a creamy texture to it."

Wight's rum, which will be bottled as Eight Bells Rum, is expected to be on the shelves by the first week in September. It's the second artisanal spirit hand crafted by Wight's new company, New England Distilling. His Ingenium Dry Gin, a flavorful sipping gin made with southeast Asian herbs as well as more traditional botanicals, launched in April.

New England Distilling, ensconced in one of the warehouse-like buildings off Riverside Street that have attracted lots of microbreweries, is a 21st-century update of a 19th-century family business and the only micro distillery in Portland – at least for now.

There are currently more than 350 licensed distilleries in the United States, with about 50 more under construction, according to the American Distilling Institute. With the arrival of New England Distilling, there are now six craft distilleries in Maine.

Wight credits changing taste buds and the success of microbrewed beers with the growth of craft distilleries across the country.

"Part of it is peoples' tastes are changing, and they're looking for more variety than I think there was in the past," Wight said. "And you've got that move towards local products. I think that drives it."

Keith Bodine, owner of Sweetgrass Farm Winery & Distillery and the maker of Back River Gin and Three Crow Rum, says he thinks it's "great" to have more craft distillers in the state.

"Just like there are many restaurants, having many distilleries gives customers a variety to choose from," he said. "That can only be a good thing."

THE FAMILY BUSINESS

Wight, who used to work at Allagash Brewing Co., started thinking about reviving his family's business, in a different form, in 2000. Then he got really serious about it five years ago.

Wight's great-great-great-grandfather, John Jacob Wight, started making Sherwood Rye Whiskey at his distillery north of Baltimore sometime during the 1850s.

Wight grew up hearing stories about the business, which shut down during Prohibition and then went through various incarnations until 1958, when the last family distillery closed. In high school, he and his father daydreamed about starting it up again.

"My grandfather, actually, was the last member of the family to run the distillery," Wight said. "I heard him talking, and there were always bottles from the distillery around. And I listened to my parents talk about it."

Wight has a collection of little Sherwood Rye Whiskey bottles at New England Distilling that he bought on eBay, and he just returned from a trip to Maryland, where he reclaimed some of the old barrel racks from the old Sherwood distillery.

"It was incredible to be in the building, and then sort of start to calculate mentally how many barrels were in this building," Wight said. "It was just unreal."

On the wall hang old photographs, dug from the files of the local historical society, of the distillery and the people who worked there.

And yes, Wight plans to make rye whiskey again, using his old family recipe as a template. He is tweaking the recipe, though, and is in the middle of making test batches with his small pilot still. He hopes to have something out late next year.

(Continued on page 2)

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