When Gareth Moore picked up his late father’s unfinished plan to make whisky in Nelson County, it was a matter of courage and conviction.
Virginia Distillery in Nelson County.
Photos by Adam Ewing
It’s still a work in progress. You would never know it, though, unless you are an expert at parsing whisky labels or were told by Gareth Moore, the earnest co-owner—with his wife, Maggie, and mother, Angela—of Virginia Distillery Co.
After all, the distillery in the tiny town of Lovingston, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, about 35 miles southwest of Charlottesville, has already bagged a slew of gold medals in national and international competitions. Among them, its 92-proof Port Cask Finished Virginia-Highland Whisky was named the best American single malt at the World Whiskies Awards in February 2017.
That’s pretty heady stuff for a distillery that only produced its first batch of spirits—Scottish-made whisky cask-finished in Virginia—in November 2015, and its first batch that combined (or in distiller’s parlance “married”) whisky imported from Scotland with whisky made in Lovingston (Batch No. 5) last May. It will officially release its flagship single malt, Courage & Conviction, entirely made in Virginia, in two years.
Port Cask Finished Virginia-Highland Whisky.
The name Courage & Conviction is a tribute to Gareth’s Irish-born father, George, who after selling his Northern Virginia tech-investing business in 2011, pursued his passion for single malt whisky by buying the assets of the Eades Hollow Distillery, which never made it out of the starting gates. George netted two magnificent long-neck copper pot stills handmade in Scotland and a wooded hollow, once an apple orchard, in the sale. Unfortunately, 18 months into his new project, he suddenly passed away.
“Mom said, ‘Go see what the hell your dad was up to down in Nelson County,’” Gareth now recalls with a rueful laugh.
What he found was a half-built distillery. “The windows and doors weren’t in. The stills weren’t connected.” One thing was clear though. “Father’s plan was to make huge volumes of whisky.”
The devoted son decided to see his father’s dream bear fruit. “Funny, when you look back,” says Gareth, 35, who holds an MBA from Georgetown and is a partner in a Washington, D.C., merchant-banking group, “I thought, okay, this will be my side project.”
By all measures, Virginia Distillery has been on a tear ever since. Working with Scottish distillery-building expert Harry Cockburne and single malt-making guru (the late)Dr. Jim Swann, known internationally as the Whisky Doctor, as well as his wife Maggie, Gareth formulated his whisky-making strategy and recipe and finished building his father’s distillery. He built a cask house for aging barrels and a visitors center that includes a tasting room and museum, featuring an old-timey lead-soldered, stove-top still that used to operate illegally in Eades Hollow. Maggie wears the hat of CXO (chief experience officer), overseeing all the social and public relations.
The enterprise now employs 25 full-time workers and dozens more part-timers, who have brought their expertise from as far as Tennessee, Colorado and Pennsylvania. “Gareth and I take a lot of pride in the team that we have brought together here,” says Maggie. “Getting the right folks and creating a positive culture, people taking care of one another.”
Inside the distillery, which you can visit, head distiller Ian Thomas, who hails from Memphis, oversees the action. His crew grinds barley from the Midwest in the distillery’s—yes, Scottish-made—1920s Boby Mill, one of only a few in the U.S., which splits the grain into three parts and produces the malt, a precise mixture of ground husks, middles and fine grains with an earthy, nutty aroma. The malt is then combined with water in the mash tun, a stainless steel mixing tank, at varying temperatures to form “wort.” Hot water and malt bring out the natural sugars from the barley.
Gareth Moore checks on a batch of whisky.
One of two copper pot stills purchased by Gareth’s late father George.
The cask room at Virginia Distillery.
Barley ground in a Scottish-made 1920s Boby Mill.
Yeast is added to start the fermentation, producing “wash,” which is similar to an unhopped beer of about 8 percent alcohol. This is then distilled in the two copper pot stills, which are heated indirectly using a boiler and steam to avoid any flavor contamination. The stills’ long necks insure a more refined taste. Between the copper pot stills sits the shiny brass-and-glass “spirit safe,” also handmade in Scotland, where Thomas or one of the other distillers turns valves at crucial moments to get the right formula. The whole process takes about five days. That’s the fast part.
The aging goes on for at least three and as long as 50 years. Virginia Distillery uses a combination of ex-bourbon casks, sherry casks, and retoasted wine casks to give the whisky much of its character. The casks are stored in airy cask houses (two more have been added in recent years).
“I like taking a time-tested Old World tradition and doing it here in the New World,” says Gareth. “It fits into the American tradition. It’s all the things immigrants bring with them and make better. The biggest difference here is the climate. The temperature swings from summer to winter are greater, causing more expansion and contraction in the casks. The whisky is sucked deeper into the staves than in a milder climate like Scotland or Ireland. That means more flavor here than there and on a faster schedule.”
For small batches—one to five casks (250 bottles per cask)—the distillery goes further afield. “We try to give it a sense of place by using local casks,” says Gareth. Wine casks from King Family Vineyards, Veritas and other Virginia wineries, cider casks from Potter’s Craft Cider in Free Union and Buskey Cider in Richmond, and even coffee-soaked casks from Trager Brothers in Lovingston and Snowing in Space Coffee in Charlottesville have all added their special notes.
Gareth and Maggie Moore with their children.
While Virginia Distillery’s ultimate high-end product—a single malt aged for four years—is still maturing in barrels and won’t be officially released until the spring of 2020, in the meantime, to wet the whistle, Batch No. 7 of the Port Cask Finished Virginia-Highland Whisky, a toasty caramel-colored liquor with intense dried fruit, toffee, and dark cocoa notes, will do just fine. A small batch finished in beer casks from Three Notched Brewing was released in February.
Remarkably, in so short a period of time, Virginia Distillery has racked 2,400 casks of whisky for aging—that’s about 750,000 bottles—and is now the largest distillery in the state and the nation’s biggest producer of single malt whisky.
But Gareth, who became the president of the Virginia Distillers Association when it formed in 2016, keeps one goal in mind as he awaits the release of Courage & Conviction. He remembers fondly that in 1982, the year he was born, his mother bought his father a hogshead of Aberlour sherry single malt, to be bottled in 18 years at the millennium.
“I grew up knowing about that cask,” he says, “the patience over the years and the anticipation. It taught me well that patience is a key ingredient to making whisky—that anticipation keeps us motivated.”
That and knowing he’s making a whisky George would have been proud of. VaDistillery.com
EDITOR’S NOTE: One of their signature products – Courage & Conviction – has been released and is available on their website. We’re pretty sure you’re going to love this single malt whiskey.
This article originally appeared in our April 2018 issue.
