Not only are our spirits available in Nashville, but very soon there will be a distillery location there too. Here is some of the news coverage of the expansion:
Distillers Push For New Nashville Business – Nashville News Story – WSMV Nashville
Nashville Scene – Bites – Corsair Distillery Aiming at Yazoo Location
Corsair means ‘gentleman pirate.’ Corsair is sometimes used to mean pirate or a type of pirate ship. They were essentially privateers, licensed pirates by their home country to do acts of piracy as long as they were against rival countries.
Micro distilleries are, as the name suggests, small scale. Our facility is 2600 square feet, gift shop included. We chose to set up at the historic town square in Bowling Green, Kentucky so we’re easy to visit and so that, once you visit us, you can do more things in the immediate area. Downtown Bowling Green has wonderful restaurants, shops, galleries, theater, parks that host many events, and Bowling Green’s new minor league baseball stadium.
We use two copper pot stills in production, our 50 gallon hybrid pot still and our 240 gallon antique still.
Our 240 gallon still is a circa 1920 classic pot still that survived prohibition. Originally a gin still, we use it for the first or “wash” pass when making whiskey. The unfinished whiskey spirit resulting from the first distillation, called low wines, is finished in our 50 gallon still.
In addition to being our spirit still for whiskey, where we do a second distillation on the low wines and cut the heart of the distillate as clear whiskey (“white dog”), our 50 gallon still makes most of our other distilled spirits. Four plates in the still’s column, each of which can be disabled, give us the flexibility to distill various spirits. We disable this column and shunt spirit vapors to still’s vapor basket to make our gin-head style gin. Extracting the flavors of gin’s botanicals via vapor, rather than soaking the juniper and other herbs in liquid alcohol, yields less bitterness and, we think, a brighter, fresher gin.
We make very small batches of spirits – just a few cases at a time – in our pot stills. Everything’s done by hand, from production to bottling.
Gin-Head Style Gin: We make our gin in very small batches using our hand-hammered gin-head pot still. This uncommon step makes our gin crisp and very smooth on the finish. We’re proud to use an unusual mix of traditional botanicals, all sustainably harvested, to give our gin a unique and refreshing character.
Vanilla Bean Vodka: We’re proud to use whole bourbon vanilla beans – the best fair trade beans we can find – to give our vodka all the richest, most authentic notes of real vanilla. The resulting spirit is more savory than you may expect, a terrific match for both sweet and dry drinks. And perfect by itself.
Spiced Rum: Our small batch spiced rum has an unusual character. We use several types of citrus peel and whole vanilla beans while going easy on our other spices and botanicals (all sustainably harvested). The result is a rum that plays well with others — a lot of flavor that doesn’t overwhelm.
Red Absinthe: We’ve started with traditional 1800′s recipes and herbs to give our absinthe superieure the clean notes of a classic blanche. Then we tweak with the unusual, including citrus, tarragon (Dragon Wormwood, a relative of the Grand Wormwood we use), and red Hibiscus for floral tones and color. We’re pleased to share this unique result with you.
Wry Moon Unaged Rye Whiskey: Made in very small batches, we’re proud to use our antique whiskey wash still then our handmade pot still to craft this unaged rye whiskey. These hand worked stills preserve the peppery, spicy cereal taste of rye which we love, resulting in a moonshine full of character.
Coming soon: Kentucky 4-grain Whiskey, Rye Whiskey, Bourbon
Craft Distilling: An emerging movement, craft distilleries are small scale operations similar to a microbrewery. Also called micro-distilleries, these hands-on operations make spirits in small batches, often producing less in a year than larger distilleries bottle in an hour. The large continuous stills used by major producers are eschewed for hand-operated pot stills. Pot stills require more labor but allow the craft distiller fine control over flavors and give broad room for experimentation. This allows craft distillers to focus on local ingredients and unusual techniques to make small volume batches of high-quality spirits.