Stoll and wolfe

 
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By Meghan Swanson, 8/6/2021

 

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the events of September 11th, 2001, shaped the consciousness of an entire generation of Americans. Those who bear witness to such monumental, shocking losses of life often come to realize something about their own; we’re not guaranteed tomorrow. Erik Wolfe, living in New York City at that tragic moment in history, was working in a director-level position in marketing for a successful internet company. He had come for an internship one summer while still in school, and found the work so exciting and dynamic that he traded his academic education for a real-time educational climb up the corporate ladder. Living through 9/11 in the city that bore the brunt of the attacks made Erik reassess his values; he made a daring move from marketing director to busboy. He couldn’t have known it at the time, but his decision to move into the food industry in order to spend more time working with his hands and express himself creatively would ultimately lead him to meet his future wife, form a close bond with a legendary distiller, and labor to bring an award-winning distillery to life in the region where he was born, and many believe American whiskey was born as well.

“It’s so hard to appreciate what’s so abundant around you until you leave, and you realize that’s not something everybody has.”

Erik’s family has been in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, for over 280 years. They still own the family farm that was started by his 7th-great-grandfather. Like many who grow up with a certain amount of good fortune, Erik never realized until he moved away the ‘embarrassment of riches’ to be found in Lancaster County. When he was younger, it didn’t occur to him that others didn’t grow up surrounded by lush green fields of corn or orchards drooping under the weight of fresh apples. He came to a new appreciation for his childhood spent making fresh applesauce with his grandmother and putting up sweet summer corn for the winters ahead. As he entered the food industry post-9/11 and saw the ‘locavore’ movement begin to catch fire, he noticed so many items on New York City menus that came from Pennsylvania. More and more people outside of Lancaster County were starting to recognize the fruitful area that today holds the proud status of most productive non-irrigated farming county in the United States.

Through the course of researching local food history, Erik found a little-known fact; a fertile local industry for the Lancaster County area was once the production of spirits. “The thing that was so compelling to me about it was how all-encompassing spirits were to the early part of America, and just how interwoven they were in everyday life. From being one of the only potable beverages to being a currency to being a storage technology of the time.” he observed. This was a ‘lightning bolt’ moment for Erik; if he, passionate about local food, history, and Lancaster County, didn’t know about the rich distilling history, then who did? Although he had no background in the spirits industry at the time, Erik could appreciate how important it was to the history of Lancaster County and saw it as a way he could pick up the torch his ancestors had borne and carry it on into the 21st century.

Erik met his wife and business partner, Avianna, working in the food industry in New York. One Thanksgiving, he and Avianna were driving back to New York City from a visit home to Pennsylvania with their 2 year-old daughter snug in her carseat behind them. As they drove past Michter Road, where Lancaster County’s most famous old distillery used to be, Erik mused how nice it would be to raise their little girl in a place like the one he’d grown up in. This dream was what ended up setting this Wolfe pack on the path to opening Stoll & Wolfe Distillery, but as the name implies, the Wolfes are not the only part of this story.

“Working with somebody like Dick, who just knew so much and had so much to share, was such an amazing opportunity and one of those things where you just want to write down everything they say.”

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To understand Stoll & Wolfe, you need to know Dick Stoll. He’s something of a legend in the whiskey world, much to his bemusement. The first time someone came up to him with a bottle of his whiskey for an autograph, he genuinely thought he’d been set up for a practical joke. A member of the Silent Generation, Korean war veteran, and Pennsylvania whiskey distilling giant, Dick may be best known as the man who distilled the ultra-rare A.H. Hirsch 16 Year Old Reserve bourbon, regarded by some as one of the best whiskeys ever created. This was long before his days at Stoll & Wolfe, after he completed his service in the U.S. Navy and returned home from Korea. He went to the unemployment office looking for work like so many other soldiers returning stateside, and they sent him to an old distillery that was re-opening to dig a ditch for them. Dick showed up on time, worked hard to get that ditch dug, and didn’t drink on the job (apparently rather a problem for employers back then); the distillery was impressed. They told Dick there was a job there for him if he wanted it, and that’s how he got his start at Pennsylvania Michter’s (yes, of Michter Road, the future site of Erik and Avianna’s Thanksgiving revelation).

“I once asked him [Dick] how he set out to be involved in whiskey, and he was honest as he was with everything else: he said he didn’t.” explains Erik. Dick’s work ethic and aptitude caught the eye of Michter’s Master Distiller at the time, C. Everett “Charlie” Beam, of the famous Beam family. Charlie took Dick under his wing and trained him in everything he needed to know to become a Master Distiller. At one point, Dick held both the positions of Master Distiller and head of maintenance at Michter’s. In a classic example of how Dick saw the world and himself in it, he tried to resign as distiller because he worried he was neglecting his duties in maintenance. The distillery said absolutely not; Dick was too valuable as Master Distiller, and they’d hire someone else to keep up with maintenance.

Dick would continue distilling for Michter’s until its abrupt closure in 1989. At that point in his 50s and facing down an unexpected career change, Dick pivoted into construction work. By the time F. Paul Pacult’s Spirit Journal handed its first five-star rating ever to the A.H. Hirsch bourbon he’d distilled, Dick was working as a custodian at a local elementary school. This could’ve been the end of the story of Dick’s contribution to the whiskey world, but Erik Wolfe had other plans for the veteran Master Distiller.

“It was one of those things, where as much as we were pursuing the opportunity, the opportunity, in some ways, was finding us as well.”

Erik and Avianna dove into their research, learning everything there was to know about the history of spirits in the Lancaster County area. A history of deeply-rooted religious movements explained why the whiskey legacy of Pennsylvania was relatively unknown compared to other regions; there were many prohibitions throughout the generations between the mid-18th century and the present. “When you go down to Kentucky, they’re so proud of their history (as they should be), and when you go visit the Beam distillery they have this giant wall of lineage that’s so fantastic...the amazing thing is, at the very top, it’s Jacob Boehm from Pennsylvania!” Erik exclaims. 

In the course of their work, they ended up in touch with local whiskey historian Ethan Smith. It was at Ethan’s home that Erik and Avianna first met Dick and his wife in 2012. Dick was ‘blown away’ by the Wolfes’ research, which included old bottles they wanted to pull ideas from and genealogical charts stretching back to their families’ connections to the area. Between their research and the small-batch distilling revelations in the Kings County Distillery Guide to Urban Moonshining by Colin Spoelman and David Haskell, they were able to convince Dick that it was the right time to get back into distilling, and Lancaster County was the right place to do it. With the history and tradition of distilling in the area firing their blood and a Master Distiller on their side, the Wolfes were ready to run. “Being connected with Dick, who had a direct connection to that rich history, for us...it almost felt like a calling,” Erik tells us, hand on his heart, unconsciously demonstrating how deeply he feels the ties to Lancaster County’s distilling past and to Dick.

“Thankfully, you don’t know what you don’t know when you start to open a distillery, because it’s just a regulatory nightmare.”

It took another six years after Erik met Dick before they were actually able to open their own distillery. In the meantime, Erik and Dick got to blending. Their very first blend was an American whiskey, made using a high rye bourbon sourced from Midwest Grain Products (MGP) and Fingerlakes Rye (switched to Death’s Door Rye later on). Dick led the blending project, teaching Erik “the patience and...confidence to just know what you’re shooting for, and just reject everything else that...doesn’t fall within that.” Blending as a ‘little guy’, Erik says, is scary. To be successful, you have to reject a lot of whiskey and do it quickly and confidently. They only had 24-48 hours from when they received the samples to make their choices, and also had to buy minimum quantities of the whiskies they did choose.

When it came to money to buy the ingredients for that first blend, Stoll & Wolfe had been counting on the sale of an inherited home that belonged to Avianna. When that sale kept getting pushed back, the money didn’t end up being available in time to finance their initial blend. Erik went to a friend in the New York restaurant world, Colin Camac. Colin believed in their idea and in what Dick was doing. He gave them the money to do the blend, and Stoll & Wolfe was able to pay him back within ten days. 

After they started blending but before they were able to open their own facility, Erik and Dick traveled to Silverback Distllery in Afton, Virginia to do some contract distilling. They worked with Master Distiller Christine Riggleman to get the first few runs right, and under her expert care they were soon satisfied that she had the recipe right and trusted her to continue their work.

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Finances are a common hurdle for new distilleries, but it was by no means the only one Stoll & Wolfe faced. “You just want to make whiskey,” Erik says with a rueful grin, “but you end up learning about fire codes, and metal fabrication, and supply chains.” Erik jokes that, like a woman can forget parts of childbirth as time passes, so can a distiller forget the worst bits of getting a distillery up and running. Fortunately, he says, “We were just too dumb to know when to quit.” That dogged perseverance has paid off. On the day we had our conversation with Erik, Stoll & Wolfe had just reached a big milestone: they had just purchased the building their distillery is located in. “As you know, with distilling if you change one little bend in the still or you move the still a quarter of an inch to the left, the flavor profile can change. So for us to be able to lock that down indefinitely was a pretty major deal.” Erik explains.

“Why anyone would be crazy enough to build a distillery? The real answer is the process of actually distilling whiskey and preserving the history locally and preserving the knowledge through the production process, for us, was a really big part of it.”

Getting their feet wet as a brand-new distilling venture through blending was a start, and the contract distillate meant that they had some of their own stuff laid down, but it was of vital importance to Stoll & Wolfe to get Dick Stoll back behind his own still and to make their own whiskey onsite. Stoll & Wolfe believes in terroir when it comes to whiskey; with their focus on Lancaster County’s role in the whiskey business and with Dick's long history of distilling in the area, it comes as no surprise that Stoll & Wolfe focuses heavily on rye; rye was a crop that historically thrived in Pennsylvania, one their ancestors turned to good use in their whiskey. As corn is to Kentucky or Tennessee, rye once was to the distillers in Pennsylvania. The initial blended whiskey was a high rye bourbon blended with young rye whiskey, to allow the flavorful spicy character from the rye to play dominantly in the face of the sweetness from the corn in the bourbon. For both the contract distillate and the stuff they are now making at their own facility, they ferment and distill on the grain to retain as much flavor and texture as they can. While the grains for the contract distillate were sourced more closely to Virginia, all the spirits they are laying down now are made from a majority of grains sourced locally in Pennsylvania.

Back when Dick was Master Distiller for Michter’s, he used a specific varietal called Rosen rye. It was a turn-of-the-century rye of Russian origin popular with Pennsylvania farmers for how easy it was to grow, and championed by Michter’s as a perfect distilling grain in the middle of the 20th century. By the 1970s it had fallen out of popular use, and by the time Stoll & Wolfe was getting their start it was practically endangered. By partnering with the Seed Spark Project, they managed to get their hands on a crop of Rosen rye re-planted from heirloom seeds. The whiskey distilled from this special crop is still aging, and will be released sometime in the near future.

Using the process and mash bills Dick held with him from his time running the Michter’s Distillery (60% rye, 30% corn, 10% malted barley)  Stoll & Wolfe has achieved excellence in the classic eastern Pennsylvania style of rye whiskey; their Pennsylvania Straight Rye Whiskey was awarded the distinction of 95 Points - Excellent, Highly Recommended in 2019’s Ultimate Spirits Challenge, a silver medal for rye whiskey in the 2019 San Francisco Spirits Competition, and was a 2018 Chairman’s Trophy top 3 finalist in its category in the Ultimate Spirits Challenge. That rye-bourbon blend discussed earlier, carefully chosen and skillfully mixed by Dick Stoll, has achieved similar acclaim; a silver medal of its own, a 93 Points - Excellent, Highly Recommended and a Chairman’s Trophy in its category.

Stoll & Wolfe’s choice to produce this excellent whiskey on a column still is a surprising one to some, but the way they run their column still may be more surprising. Erik was told “No respectable person makes whiskey on a column still.” The attitude they ran up against was that column stills are what the ‘devil’ - corporate giants - distill on, not what modern craft distilleries use. Fortunately, Dick had no such bias; he made whiskey at Michter’s on a column still that was 6 feet in diameter and about 60 feet tall. “It’s almost like [Bob] Dylan plugging in,” Erik explains. “I don’t think he killed his music by going electric--it was a slightly different bent on it, but you can take the same instrument and make it sound a lot of different ways,” he points out. They run their column to a very low proof, with the hearts coming off around 100 proof. The hearts then go directly into a combination thumper/double, fondly referred to by Erik as the “dumper”, where either through additional steam heat or the ambient heat from the column they force the distillate into another immediate distillation that pushes the proof closer to 130-135 proof. Distilling in this way allows for them to create a finished product in one pass that still retains a ton of flavor and character from the grains. 

“United by purpose across time.”

This is Stoll & Wolfe’s motto, and its elegance and guiding influence can be felt in everything they do. “For us, it’s the idea that there are people, places, and traditions that have forged the path that we’re now following.” Erik tells us. Stoll & Wolfe considers itself part of a tradition larger than themselves, and works hard to honor those that came before them and those that will come after. In one unexpected way, Erik found himself experiencing a connection he never dreamed he might get a chance to.

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Erik’s own grandfather passed away a year before Erik was born. Dick, as it turned out, was born just ten months apart from Erik’s grandfather. He attended a rival high school in the same town as Erik’s grandfather, they both served in the Navy, and they even happened to serve on the same ship during the Korean War (albeit a few weeks apart). For Erik, hearing Dick recount visits to ports his grandfather would have also visited helped form a familial bond much like he might’ve had with his grandfather, had they had a chance to know each other. “The only thing Dick would object to with that,” Erik laughs, “is when I would say he was like a grandfather. He’d be like, ‘I’m not that old, I’m more like a father.’”

Dick Stoll passed away in August of 2020. “For us, just to have a mentor that was so kind and so sharing, but also knew that he was of advanced years and had a finite amount of time was just a truly special experience. I definitely miss being able to turn to Dick and ask what he thought and get his opinion, but we’re definitely doing our best to honor his legacy.” Erik says.

One of the ways Stoll & Wolfe is honoring family connections and traditions is actually through its marketing choices. “In every family that’s been here for a long time there’s an old Bible. A lot of them are still in German, because they’re that old.” Erik recounts. “...they’d get passed down through generations and in the margins of the Bible, people would write the family history.” The particular font common to German typesetting of the time, called Fraktur, is where Stoll & Wolfe drew the distinctive lettering for their labels from. They wanted to showcase something indicative of their region that would also serve as an immediate beacon to anyone who grew up in the area and would recognize that lettering from their family Bible.

The beautifully stylized labels on their bottles are also a subtle nod to familial connections and area history. Long before Portlandia ‘put a bird on it’, birds were important to the local symbolism of Pennsylvania. They tend to represent change, often being cast as harbingers. Stoll & Wolfe’s bottles sport three birds; look closely, and you’ll see two at the top and one perched at the bottom. Erik worked with designer David Cole, and the choice to put three birds in was a deliberate one. They represent Dick, Erik’s father, and Erik; or, put another way, the past, present, and future. 

“When you live in areas where there’s so much happening...you worry that maybe the movement has passed by. One thing that I’ve learned...is that the craft spirits revolution is still in its infancy.”

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Where does Stoll and Wolfe go after the loss of Stoll? The answer: onward. For better or for worse, Stoll & Wolfe has been entirely self-funded. They don’t have to put up certain numbers to satisfy any investors, so they’re free to keep holding what Erik jokes is the “Traveling Stoll & Wolfe Salvation Show”; a metaphorical old-school tent revival meeting to spread the good word about Pennsylvania whiskey via events, podcast appearances, and interviews. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected Stoll & Wolfe’s operations, of course. They’ve been moving through inventory at an alarmingly fast rate as customers without access to the tasting room buy entire bottles instead of one cocktail at a time. They never stopped working, however, and have some bourbon laid by that they’re impatiently waiting to age. In the meantime, they’re excited to be whipping up a corn whiskey that may be ready sooner.

For Stoll & Wolfe, calling something a Pennsylvania whiskey doesn’t necessarily mean just that the grains were grown there or the whiskey was distilled there (though those are important components). It’s also about where the barrels are maturing, the entry proof of the barrels, the filtration process, the proportions on the mash bill, and more. All of these factors, masterfully applied by Dick Stoll and continued by Erik Wolfe, contribute to their very distinctive Pennsylvania style whiskey. 

We’ve already mentioned Stoll & Wolfe believes in terroir, a concept borrowed from the wine world. Much like a wine consumer knows the difference between an Oregon pinot noir and a Marlborough sauvignon blanc, Erik believes consumers are going to begin to learn to identify whiskies by their geographical regions. Stoll & Wolfe aims to be the ones to show consumers what it means to drink whiskey from Lancaster County.

Firmly rooted in the past but always looking forward, Stoll & Wolfe is beautifully balancing the job of telling the history of their home without becoming a footnote in it themselves. As they strive to make more barrels, try new things, and see what age does to their currently quite young stable of spirits, they’ll be doing their best to spread the word on Pennsylvania whiskey as far as they can so that more people who are interested can get familiar with the story they have to tell and the fine spirits they have to offer. In the meantime, should you ever find yourself driving through the fertile fields of Lancaster County, stop by the Stoll & Wolfe tasting room in Lititz. Get a pour of their whiskey, perhaps that highly lauded Pennsylvania Straight Rye, and taste the work of a late legend and the passionate dedication of his heir apparent. 


TASTING NOTES:

Blend of American Straight Whiskeys (43% ABV)

Nose: Grassy, Floral, Honey, Creamy Caramel, Anise

Palate: The mouthfeel is soft and watery with hints of sweet oak and brown sugar up front that take on an earthier corn flavor as it moves into the mid palate. Mild spice picks up in the mid palate as well leading to a short and oak, slightly bitter finish. 

This is a nice whiskey. Very approachable and easy to drink. It is well balanced between sweet, spicy and bitter and shows up the positive elements of the bourbons and ryes that were used to make it. 

Pennsylvania White Rye Whiskey (50% ABV)

Nose: Kiwi, Pineapple, Honey Granola

Palate: The mouthfeel is still light with a bit more heat. There is a malty sweetness up front with notes of buttered rye toast. That sweetness settles into honeydew melon and spice on the mid-palate, leading to a medium finish of corn tortilla chips, cantaloupe, lemon peel and black pepper. 

This is a great white rye. The nose is incredibly inviting and dynamic, and while the palate doesn’t exactly match the nose, the flavors are similarly expressive, delighting the taste buds from front to back. 

Pennsylvania Rye Whiskey (45% ABV)

Nose: Vanilla Custard, Caramel Drizzle, Bread Pudding, Rice Krispie Treats

Palate: The mouthfeel is similar to the white rye, but the heat is more refined and warming. That early note of buttered rye toast remains but this time is matched with graham crackers and orange citrus. The mid-palate retains some sweetness while picking up some bready and spicy notes, reminiscent of a cinnamon roll. The sweetness starts to dissipate towards the back of the palate with some subtle hints of candied orange peel leading to a medium finish of cocoa powder, cinnamon and chai tea. 

This is a beautiful rye whiskey. The spicy elements that people come to expect from a rye are there, but the sweetness, perhaps from the corn, acts as a beautiful balance. The youthfulness of the whiskey actually seems to work in its favor, as the barrel has given the corn and rye some wonderful compliments without overtaking them completely.

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