Hillrock Estate Distillery / OFFICIAL SPONSOR

HILLROCK STORY: 200 YEARS IN THE MAKING

avatar.jpg.320x320pxIn the early 1800’s, New York produced more than half the young nation’s Barley and Rye and the Hudson Valley was the country’s breadbasket. With abundant high quality grain, local craft spirits flourished and over 1000 farm distilleries produced Whiskey and Gin reflecting the unique terroir of the region. In the 1930’s, Prohibition forced these distilleries to shut their doors and this wellspring of American spirits was left dry.

Hillrock Estate Distillery is changing this. Our mission is to produce the finest hand-crafted spirits made with our own grain, floor malted, craft distilled in our copper pot still, aged in fine oak and hand bottled at our estate in the Hudson Valley Highlands. Crowned by a fine 1806 Georgian house built by a successful grain merchant and Revolutionary War Captain and meticulously restored to its original beauty, Hillrock Distillery overlooks our rolling barley fields and the distant Berkshire Mountains. Like our premier spirits, every detail refined, no expense spared, quality steeped in the tradition of 200 years of rich history. Hillrock is proud to be one of the few “field-to-glass” whiskey producers in the world and the first USA distillery since before Prohibition to floor malt and hand craft whiskey on site from estate grown grain.

Hillrock’s commitment to quality embodies the rich history of artisanal distilling in the Hudson Valley. By controlling every aspect of production from planting & harvesting heirloom grains, to smoking our malt, to crafting whiskies in our copper pot still, to aging in small oak barrels and hand bottling, we are able to create the highest quality whiskies reflecting the unique local terroir.

 
THE ART OF FINE CRAFT DISTILLING HAS MADE THE JOURNEY HOME…

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WE JOINED! Tread Lightly!

The Muddy Chef Challenge is for Land Rover owners.  Land Rovers work best where they were intended – in the wild!  We give owners the opportunity to drive vintage and modern Rovers in challenging real-world settings.  As such, we take off-road trail use seriously.  Our events do not destroy ancient town roads.  We don’t pull down trees, or drive off predetermined trail routes.  At every opportunity we collect trash and litter.

As a Tread Lightly! member we strive to promote responsible off-road trail usage.  We hope everyone who joins our events will consider becoming a Tread Trainer to help spread the word!  For more information about becoming a Trainer, click HERE. 

 

Tread Lightly!: What We Do Infographic

Muddy Chef Challenge / Pre-Running the Madava Trail

The Muddy Chef (www.muddychef.com) staff and a select few volunteers recently visited Crown Maple/Madava Estate. We spent the day pre-running the trails and moving a log or two.  Lunch was served in the parking lot and everyone had a great time.  Video provided by Brad Andrews.

 

 

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Hillrock Estate Distillery in Whisky Advocate

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Hillrock Estate Distillery: tiny, vertical, and beautiful

July 2nd, 2012

Whisky Advocate’s managing editor and contributor Lew Bryson reports on his visit to Hillrock Estate Distillery.

I recently took a trip up to Hillrock Estate Distillery, near Ancram, New York. The distillery is east of the Hudson River, near the Massachusetts border, in a rolling, wooded valley near the Berkshires, an area that was settled by Dutch grain planters. This is a part of the country I’m well familiar with; my wife grew up here, and we were married about fifteen miles away. So I wasn’t surprised to find that the roads to Hillrock were narrow and winding, or that the place itself was beautifully rural.

Hillrock is the baby of Jeffrey Baker, who made his money in banking…but has a farming background. He’s been involved in small-scale farming as a sideline for over 20 years, having started with a dairy farm in 1989, then organic beef, finally moving down from the Vermont border to Ancram, where he became interested in the concept of field-to-glass distilling. He was particularly interested in the idea of tasting a difference from grain grown in one field vs. another, and eventually hooked up with well-known distilling expert Dave Pickerell.

Dave’s spent quite a bit of time here in the past year, and was there when I arrived at Baker’s 1806 farmhouse. They were in a mood to celebrate: they had just that very minute received an approval email from ATTTB for their solera bourbon label. We went out on the porch, looked down on the distillery, sitting in a sunny spot between a barley field and a rye field, and talked.

Hillrock’s all about details. The rye and barley is grown here and on another 100 or so acres in the valley (the corn is grown by local farmers); it’s being grown organically, but they haven’t received their certification yet. They built a malthouse with floor maltings, what they believe to be the first such in-house distillery maltings in the country since Repeal. They’re using a variety of smoking techniques for some of the malt (and looking at old maps to find local peat sources). They are distilling on a combi-still (a pot still with a column) with a series of adjustments applicable to the type of spirit produced that Pickerell would take pains to show me (distillation began in October, 2011). They are currently aging spirit in seven different barrel sizes.

It was the seven different barrel sizes that led Pickerell to laugh and admit, “Sometimes I do things that are a pain in the ass.” His day-to-day distiller (and maltster, and warehouse manager, and bottler…), Tim Welly, grinned in tacit agreement.

That in turn led Baker to admit that he went along with all of it, and instigated some of it. That’s why he’s the sole investor. “I’m a detail-oriented guy,” he explained. “If you’re going to do this, something this insane…do you really want an investor looking over your shoulder?”

We did sit down and taste the solera bourbon, which includes aged stock they bought and mingled with small-barrel aged Hillrock distillate. It is a good whiskey, with a cinnamon-spicy, fruit-laced finish. Dave recalled his excitement when that spicy note appeared. “That’s from that field,” he said. It was proof of the terroir concept, when they knew they had something with the estate-grown grain concept.

The solera bourbon will be available in New York around the beginning of October, as will a single malt whisky that is about to begin a wood finishing process. Dave was a bit cagey about that, only saying that he’d done research and found a dynamite wood to season whiskey; further pressure would only get that it was a type of fruit tree. Or maybe a nut tree. And he wouldn’t tell me more.

The tasting room is more like a small vineyard than most small distillery’s, with graceful wood furniture and samples of locally-grown foods. The whole place is simply elegant, and will make a great tour once it’s open.

There’s not going to be a lot of whiskey out of Hillrock, but I suspect we’ll be seeing more of them, and more of this type of high-end distillery; like Distillery No. 209, a high-end gin distillery in San Francisco that I visited last fall. This is going to be part of the future of whiskey distilling, a small and very interesting part.

From: http://whiskyadvocate.com/whisky/2012/07/02/hillrock-estate-distillery-tiny-vertical-and-beautiful/

HILL ROCK DISTILLERY / OFFICIAL SPONSOR

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In the early 1800’s, New York produced more than half the young nation’s Barley and Rye and the Hudson Valley was the country’s breadbasket. With abundant high quality grain, local craft spirits flourished and over 1000 farm distilleries produced Whiskey and Gin reflecting the unique terroir of the region. In the 1930’s, Prohibition forced these distilleries to shut their doors and this wellspring of American spirits was left dry.
Hillrock Estate Distillery is changing this. Our mission is to produce the finest hand-crafted spirits made with our own grain, floor malted, craft distilled in our copper pot still, aged in fine oak and hand bottled at our estate in the Hudson Valley Highlands. Crowned by a fine 1806 Georgian house built by a successful grain merchant and Revolutionary War Captain and meticulously restored to its original beauty, Hillrock Distillery overlooks our rolling barley fields and the distant Berkshire Mountains. Like our premier spirits, every detail refined, no expense spared, quality steeped in the tradition of 200 years of rich history.
Hillrock Estate Distillery is located in the heart of the historic Hudson Valley two hours north of New York overlooking rolling hills and the distant Berkshire Mountains. Prime farmland, crystal clear water, favorable climate and a rich local history of fine spirits make a unique terroir which is profoundly expressed in Hillrock’s whiskeys.

Hillrock House was carefully restored in 2006 and the Palladian window above the entry is proudly displayed on the Hillrock bottle. Original twelve over twelve, wavy glass windows, hand planed wide board floors and period doors and trim speak of another era. The fine details and craftsmanship of the house reflect the pride of the region two hundred years ago and Hillrock’s commitment to quality and tradition.
The Hillrock Distillery, Malt House, Granary and Barrel Houses are located at the center of the estate surrounded by our rolling grain fields. Integrated into the landscape, the traditional barn structures convey a simple, timeless elegance. The complex also forms the heart of our “field-to-glass” craft distilling operation.The Distillery houses Hillrock’s custom-made copper distillation equipment. Our copper pot still, mash tun and spirit receiver were hand made by American craftsmen to our specifications. Housed in a traditional barn, the state-of-the-art equipment provides our master distiller with extraordinary control over the character and quality of each individual small batch of our premier artisanal spirits.