The Copper Fox Distillery

The namesake at the distillery in Sperryville.

In yesterday's post, I mentioned that I had two ulterior motives for taking Mary out on the Stonyman hike on Saturday.  Besides the beautiful weather, I wanted to check out how my new Casio Pathfinder worked, and that was a success.  The second motive was a surprise - to make a stop at the Copper Fox Distillery in Sperryville.

I'd visited the distillery with Chris last year when we had to cancel a hike due to rain.  A few weeks later, Mary and I had spontaneously gone over for a tour on a Sunday, finding the place closed (as it always is on Sundays).  We also met the proprieter at one of the brewers meetings last year, when he came by to talk about how he sources his barley.

Inside the barrel room.  BTW:  Virginia law does not allow
whiskey tasting inside the production facility.

At the meeting, and again during our tour last weekend, they tell us that the grain comes from a farmer in Virginia's Northern Neck.  Inside the distillery, one of the first images you see is the pallets of raw grain in big white sacks, waiting to be malted and milled.  The tour also gives you a look at each of these steps in the process.

Over the course of the year since Chris and I checked the place out, their production has grown and they've added new products.  For example, they sell the spirit now (essentially grain alcohol, albeit legal and not moonshine!) as a specialty product that you can age yourself in little whiskey barrels.  I made a mental note of the new, larger malting tub and the increased square footage of the malting room as indicators of a growing - thriving, business.

Here's the van they use to deliver the whiskey.  I've seen
it around town - the liquor store at 9th & F Street NW in
DC carries the products.

While we were in the barrel room, we were told that up to 30 percent of the whiskey product is sold overseas now.  When I was here last year, they mentioned they might have some new spirits to offer soon, and we were introduced to the gin they're making.  No tasting on the premises, however, their license doesn't allow it.

It's a real treat to have a distillery nearby, and this is a great tour to take in if you're out this way headed to Shenandoah National Park.  It's in Sperryville, just south of US 211/522, before you get to town.  Here's a link:  http://www.copperfox.biz/index/

Visiting Sperryville's Copper Fox Distillery

During October’s meeting of the Blue Ridge Brewers Association (there’s a blog link in the right hand column), my introduction to the group, as a matter of fact, there were several very interesting topics covered while we enjoyed sampling each other’s beers.  With several established hobby hopyards represented, the group had set out to find one of the remaining traditional beer ingredients locally:  barley.

A local farmer had committed an acre to growing an appropriate variety, but the group still faced the challenge of how to malt it.  A little research led to the discovery of the Copper Fox distillery over in Sperryville, where Rick Wasmund has an operation that uses Virginia-grown barley to produce several whiskey varieties. 

There’s more about Rick’s operation here http://www.oldtowncrier.com/archive/589-rick-wasmund.  

Rick brought some of the barley he uses with him and shared it with the group.  It is smoked on fruitwood, and several members are brewing porters with it that they will have ready for tasting at the January meeting.

Well, after all that back story, I really want to write about is visiting the distillery a couple of weeks ago.  My buddy Chris had come out with a plan to hike that weekend, but there were weather-related difficulties and we ended up canceling the hike.  Since we’d planned to go over to Sperryville anyway (we were going to hike Buck Hollow and the trail head is on US 211 just west of Sperryville) we decided instead to head on over to the “Copper Fox” Distillery – where Wasmunds Whiskey is made.

Tours are offered, but they’ve decided there is too much liability for giving tastings.  But here you can take a look around and see how the malting is done, see where the fruitwood smoking takes place, and then head over for the fermentation, distilling, and barreling rooms. 

I’ve been to places like this before – the Ansbach Uralt brandy plant on the Rhein River in Germany comes to mind.  But what made this special for me is the fact that it’s an all-Virginia product that is made locally to Hawksbill Cabin, probably only 15 miles as the crow flies from the house, a bit longer to drive.

After we met Rick at the brewing club meeting Mary bought me a bottle of the single malt, which I’ve been enjoying and sharing.  I’m happy to recommend the distillery as an outing – I’m looking forward to taking friends there from time to time.  And we’ll enjoy the whiskey too.  

Local Brewers

Dan told me that a group of folks interested in brewing was organizing in the Page County area.  They've named the group The Blue Ridge Brewers Association - there's a blog, linked in my blogroll, and their doing lots of other things to organize.

Yesterday was the regular meeting.  There was serious business to cover:

1) a local effort to develop a local source of malt for brewing - a farmer has planted about 3/4 acre of two row barley for this purpose;
2) a visit from the folks over at Copper Fox Distillery over in Sperryville, where they are already engaged in crafting malts for their products, and for special orders nationwide; and
3) results from a tasting given at the Luray Downtown Initiative (LDI) and the prospect for another soon at the Luray Caverns CX.

As I mentioned, this is the first of the meetings I'd attended.  There was this obscure item on the agenda that I was especially curious about, called "Around The Cooler."  This ended up being the tasting section of the meeting - quite a few of the members had brought samples of their latest or a recent batch, or even a commercially available craft brew.

Although I had found a bottle of my recent Belgian Black on Saturday, I figured that one 22 oz. bottle wasn't enough to bring for this purpose.  I hope to have something to share in the future, however.

In any case, it was quite an educational program, as we progressed through a couple of items you wouldn't traditionally expect to find at a homebrewers' meeting:

• Kabuchi - a fermented tea
• A Marzen-style lager
• A Belgian Chimay-style
• An IPA
• A porter
• An Imperial Stout
• Whisky from Copper Fox

We also had some very tasty sauerkraut and wursts...There's more to come from this group!