Notes of apple, pear, smoke, peat, sea

Apple Brandy Peated Cask
100% New York unsprayed apples
Aged 2 years in an ex Laphroaig Cask
750mL
50% Alc. by Vol.

SUGGESTED SERVE

The peat lends a real campfire at the beach flavor -- so it drinks especially well on the North Fork. We're sipping it on the rocks. Fancy a cocktail? Sub it in for the whiskeys in a Penicillin and you'll infuse that modern classic with the character of a coastal orchard.

Ingredients:

2 oz Sweet Triumph Peated Cask
3/4 oz lemon juice
3/4 oz honey syrup (mix equal parts honey and warm water)
1/4 oz ginger syrup
Candied ginger, for garnish

Instructions:

In a shaker filled with ice, combine the peated apple brandy, lemon juice, honey syrup, and ginger syrup.
Shake vigorously until well-chilled.
Strain into a rocks glass filled with ice
Garnish with a piece of candied ginger.

INTO THE BOTTLE

Three years ago, the team piled into cars and a u-haul dragging a trailer upstate for harvest at our friend Henry's apple orchard in Plattekill. We spent 3 days laying down tarps, climbing trees and giving them a shake, collecting the apples that would fall below. We stayed in an old Church, rehabbed and reimagined by friends of friends, and renamed The House of Dog. We played an epic and hotly contested game of monopoly, cruised up to Mountain Dale for dinner at High Voltage where we had some truly incredible burgers and had a bonfire, made all the more dramatic by the views of the neighboring mountains and the stars illuminating the sky.

Somewhere in the middle of the trip, Scotty and Stephen had to drive home, offload the apples, and return with more empty bins. We were underprepared! We never imagined how fruitful our mission might prove to be. We were there thanks to Henry, of Henry's Wine and Spirits, a revered establishment nestled in Bushwick. I fell in love with that shop from the moment I first saw it, maybe 8 years ago. It's a treasure chest of wines and spirits where shifting a bottle always reveals a new one, like nesting dolls. I could stay in there for hours..

Henry was an early adopter of Matchbook. And so I went in once or twice to taste people on our bottles as they explored the shop. That's when Henry told me that he had bought a neglected apple orchard upstate -- and was looking for opportunities for his fruit. The orchard was idyllic. It took turns, featured slope and diverse terrain. There was a clearing on one side with a small pond. We'd stop for lunch under the trees and take in the bucolic scene.

We had the apples crushed and pressed with clarity at a local cidery and orchard back on the North Fork. Apples are full of pectin, which breaks down into methanol -- so it's important that we have very clear juice. Trace amounts in cider and wine might be no big deal -- but the problem compounds when it's concentrated through distillation. We let the juice spontaneously ferment with ambient yeasts for just over 2 weeks, allowing the temperature to top out at 68F. In fermentation guided without the use of additives, temperature is an important lever we have to pull. The general range of fermentation temperatures is 50F - 90F. Here we chose 68F to maintain the fresh aromatics and flavors in the apples while also trying to promote fruity esters with apple, pear, and tropical fruit aromas and delicate floral notes from the fermentation. The final alcohol was just over 5%.

After the two week ferment we double pot distilled the cider -- starting with the 600 gallon copper pot still and then down to the 100 gallon copper pot still. Double pot distillation with an agitator allows us to take broad cuts, increasing flavor and potentially yield. It brings the alcohol by volume down, so we'll need to dilute it with less water to get it to proof. Most notably, it gives us the opportunity to pull more alcohols and compounds that will esterify in barrel into our hearts cut.

In April of 2021, we put the spirit down to rest in a retired Laphroaig cask with incredible peat character. It's smokey and a bit salty -- like a bonfire on the beach with a bit of dried seaweed mixed in. In that barrel it sat for the last 2 years, until we pulled it this week, proofed it to 50% (100 Proof) blended it with the OG peated Sweet Triumph made from dessert apples from Indian Ladder Farms.

The peat lends a real campfire at the beach flavor -- so it drinks especially well on the North Fork. We're sipping it on the rocks. Fancy a cocktail? Sub it in for the whiskeys in a Penicillin and you'll infuse that modern classic with the character of a coastal orchard.

Cheers!

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