As you may, or may not, know – September is Bourbon Heritage month – and there’s still time to celebrate. When it comes to Bourbon whiskey the Sunshine State offers you a lot of options. We have had the opportunity to visit some of these locations and they are fun as well as producing a great product.
St. Augustine Distillery
For example, the St. Augustine Distillery Company is a Florida business collaborative; a group of locals that share a dream. They have worked diligently to distill super premium, small batch spirits it better than anyone in the world – and are succeeding on a number of levels.
They started by bringing some of the world’s best distilling experts to St Augustine — the oldest and coolest small city in America — then combine it with locally grown sugar cane, wheat, corn, and citrus. The notion was to develop a finer quality spirit than just about any other place in the world.
While the business is new, the location is not. They operate out of St Augustine’s Historic FP&L Ice Plant. Built as part of St. Augustine’s first power and ice complex in 1907, owners have restored and brought it back to serve the community for the next century.
The Ice Plant is a contributing building to the Lincolnville Neighborhood on the National Register of Historic Places and was the first of it’s kind to make commercial block ice in Florida over 100 years ago. Today, it is helping us make Florida’s first bourbon and other fine craft spirits.
When you visit St. Augustine, you need to budget some time to go through their tour. It is fun, informative and you get enough of a sample to stock up on their product before you leave
Additional information can be forund at their website at http://staugustinedistillery.com/
Timber Creek
On a family farm located just north of Destin, Florida is the Timber Creek Distillery. These folks are so far out into the woods they have to come back toward town to go hunting.
Their vision is to take the best local fruits and grains from the Florida Pa nhandle and turn them into the finest Craft Spirits. They take great pride in hand making every batch and hand bottling every bottle.
The Florida Panhandle and Gulf Coast are blessed with some fantastic local crops. For their Whiskeys, they use local Red Soft Winter Wheat, local Yellow #2 Dent Corn, and local Florida 401 Black Rye.
The Timber Creek distillery is unique inasmuch as they use a custom designed pot still, “thumper”, and copper worm condenser to allow the bold favors of the raw ingredients to shine through.
Find out more about their operation at http://timbercreekdistillery.com/
Winter Park Distilling
The Winter Park Distilling Company was founded in 2010 by Paul Twyford and Andrew Asher. Both were raised in Winter Park. They were later joined by Andrew’s wife, Francesca, a transplant from Palm Beach County.
Starting with just a handmade 50-gallon still and a few old recipes for whiskey, they established the Winter Park Distilling Company as the first and finest craft distillery in Orange County, Florida.
Their Bear Gully Classic Reserve Bourbon is the very first craft bourbon made in Florida. A single barrel bourbon, it is crafted with a rich local corn mash and aged in a naturally heated rackhouse to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. In this thick, humid, summertime air our award-winning Florida bourbon gets its smooth and rich finish imbued with a proud Central Florida pedigree.
They may be found at https://wpdistilling.com/
Those are just a few of the Sunshine State distilleries and definitely Florida Fun Travel locations.
In addition to their stock, each also offers tours of their facilities.
And – A Bourbon Festival
And finally, no Florida Fun Travel report would be complete without a festival – and this is no exception. This March, the Bacon & Bourbon Festival will be held in Wellington.
Attendees will be able to pig out on a wide-ranging menu developed by local chefs exploring the boundaries of bacon and pork related dishes from the inspired, just like the comfort food Mom used to make, to the somewhat insane and unusual of bacon ice cream.
Bring this together with the flavors of well-aged bourbon and you have a match made in heaven. But just in case you can’t be tempted to partake of bourbon, Irish whiskey, rye, icy cold beer and a sampling for wine will be at the ready as well.
In addition to bacon, the festival will feature an eclectic selection of bourbon and whiskeys. The distiller’s art and patient techniques are shared in a series of seminars and tastings.
There will be plenty of backyard games including; corn hole, jenga, checkers and the now famous pig race game!
Find them at http://delraybaconandbourbonfest.com/#modal
In fact, we are getting ready to make our own custom bourbon thanks to the fine folks at Timber Creek. Visit our Florida Fun Travel Facebook page or drop us a line at floridafuntravel@yahoo.com.
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