Kevin Alker’s family came to New Orleans in 1848 and started a business making oak barrels, which they shipped upriver to whiskey distillers and back to Europe. Generations later, he’s gotten more directly involved in the spirits business by opening the Old Alker Distillery on Oak Street. Old Alker makes bourbon, vodka, gin and some liqueurs, and the distillery’s bar opened Aug. 2. At the bar, Ryan Guillory makes cocktails to highlight the spirits. For more information, visit oldalkerdistillery.com.
Gambit: How did you get interested in distilling?
Kevin Alker: I had played around making stuff. I don’t think I ever made anything you would have put in a bottle.
I dove in about six years ago. In 2018, I was looking for what I was going to do in my retirement after 30 years in the print business. I made the decision and went on this journey around the country and spent a lot of time at distilleries. I joined the American Distillers Institute, which is a craft distillers organization. I joined the community and met people. I met a consultant named Ian Smiley, and we talked about production methods and things before we put together our plan.
At first I wanted to distill, and in my mind you put it in a bottle and put it on a shelf. As I met distillers around the country, I became aware that the business model for most of them was based on the front of the house and tours and tastings. Basically the front of the house supports the back of the house, because it takes years for many of these products to be ready. You get people to come in and tour your facility, and I figured New Orleans would be a great place to do that.
Looking around New Orleans, a lot of businesses like this are in out of the way places because of the warehousing and all. I decided to do the opposite and put mine in the middle of a cool environment with a lot of people.
Gambit: What spirits did you want to focus on?
Alker: In 2018, when I decided I was going to do this, Ian told me you’ve got to get something made for when you open. I thought we’d open in three years and have a three-year-old bourbon. It turned into a six year journey, so they were in storage for a lot longer, but the plus side was that we had a six-year-old bourbon.
The spirits I wanted to focus on are aged spirts: rum and whiskey, and bourbon in particular. I wasn’t going to make vodka and gin at first. But as the front of the house became a priority, I knew I needed to have spirits to allow the bar to have some nice cocktails and tastings.
For our gin, we have a citrus-forward gin with juniper in the back. Everything here is craft in the back, and we’re continuing that feel into the front.
(As a distillery) we can only sell and make drinks with what we make, so we decided to do a whole lot of liqueurs as well. We have amaretto, a coffee liqueur and a chocolate liqueur. We have strawberry liqueur triple sec in the works right now. The whole line expanded because we wanted to have a robust experience in the front of the house.
Right now, we are emptying some of those barrels of bourbon, and we are back filling them with rum. A great second use for a bourbon barrel is rum. We’re going to make rum for the next few months. We’re a couple of months away from having a clear rum at the bar, and early next year, we’ll have our amber rum. We’re making rum for three months, and then we’re going to transition to bourbon for four to six months after that.
Gambit: What can guests get at the distillery?
Ryan Guillory: We have all the tools we need to make incredible cocktails. We’re slightly limited because we have to make (spirits) ourselves. If I want to use vermouth, I have to make it. I am building a lot of oleos, cordials and different syrups.
One of my favorite drinks is the Cupid Shuffle, which is a classic shaken cream-style cocktail. It uses our vodka, our chocolate liqueur, our raspberry oleo and cream.
Alker: It’s almost a dessert drink, but it’s not heavy like you think it would be. It’s like a chocolate covered raspberry.
Guillory: With our gin and tonic, I’ve found that if you carbonate the entire cocktail, it makes it a much better experience. I am adding our gin, a tonic syrup, a little bit of lime juice and some water and carbonating the entire thing.
With a screwdriver or greyhound, it makes a difference if the juices are as fresh as you can make them.
For whiskey, we have an old fashioned. I am doing a mint julep recipe straight from the Kentucky Derby. The Cane and Abel is a snowball cocktail. I make a blackberry and vinegar shrub and add that to bourbon and lime sec and bitters. I pour it over shaved ice. It looks like a snowball.
Alker: At this point, we are a couple weeks in. We’re in the first phase. Our website will allow people to book tours and tastings soon. The next phase is going to be distribution. We’re going to self-distribute. As far as I know, we’re the first distiller in Louisiana that’s going to self-distribute. Regional distribution is in the future for us. It’s not now because of our production levels.
This article was originally published by a www.nola.com . Read the Original article here. .