Virginia Distillery
By Meghan Swanson, 11/7/2021
Whiskey is a high-risk endeavor in the best of times; the investment represented by a commercially viable distillery, both financial and emotional, is staggering. By its very nature, one has to wait for the product to mature, and haul the fledgling operation along in the meantime by any means possible. This is a familiar refrain to distillers, and has been so for all the hundreds of years that man has been making whiskey. In April 2020, when Virginia Distillery Company was getting ready to launch their flagship American Single Malt whisky Courage & Conviction, the stakes felt impossibly high. The product they’d labored over for half a decade, carefully calibrated through science and the mystic arts of sensory sampling, was about to be brought out into a world gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic. People everywhere were succumbing to the mysterious illness, the nation had gone into full lockdown, and no successful treatment or vaccine was in sight. Gareth H. Moore, CEO, and Maggie Moore, Chief Experience Officer, were expecting their third child together in the midst of it all. At a time when people were wiping down grocery deliveries, running marathons on their balconies, and bitterly debating the science behind epidemiologists’ recommendations, how was their long-awaited whisky going to be received? Could it be successful - and bigger still, what was the world going to look like when COVID-19 had finished with it?
Virginia Distillery Company had faced adversity–including death–from the very beginning. The distillery itself came into being in 2011, but its course was set decades earlier when Dr. George G. Moore left his home in County Louth, Ireland, for Virginia. The man who would one day be called “one of the most successful Irish-American businessmen of his generation” came to our shores in 1972, followed shortly thereafter by his high-school sweetheart, Angela. He was headed for a master’s and a doctorate in business at George Washington University. His professor at University College Dublin, John Teeling, is the one who helped him nab a scholarship in the States for his continued education. It is, perhaps, fitting that George ended up dreaming of distilling after his long and successful data analytics career. Teeling, among other achievements, is known for breaking the Irish Distillers’ monopoly over the Irish whiskey industry by converting what was once a potato alcohol plant in County Louth to a distillery producing high quality Irish whiskey.
While George and Angela made their way the long distance from Ireland to Virginia to chase their fortunes, their son Gareth stayed quite close to home. His home in Virginia is just across the river from the hospital he was born in.
“The whiskey was a bit of a lark.”
George’s primary life’s work lay in data analytics and business; he has an impressive track record for starting and selling successful companies. In 2011, he sold Targus Info, his company that had provided, among other things, the service of Caller ID since 1993. The very same month he sold the company, he invested in the founding of Virginia Distillery Company. Although George was Irish, he harbored a passion for Scottish single malts. Ever the bold businessman, he dreamed he could create his own single malt. He didn’t want to copy Scotland - he wanted to make the next great American whiskey. George bought land in Nelson County, Virginia, for his ‘retirement project’ and hired Harry Cockburn, of Scotland’s Bowmore Distillery, to engineer the distilling system. In a sudden and tragic twist of fate, George would die of a heart attack just 18 months after hatching his distillery dream - he would never see what came of its potential.
George’s family, left reeling from the unexpected loss, hardly knew anything about the distillery project. George had spoken little of it, so it wasn’t at the top of their minds right after he passed. It was some time later before Angela prompted Gareth to go find out what George had been up to in Nelson County. “There were no windows, no doors, but the tanks were there and the stills were there,” recalls Gareth. He was stunned by the amount of work his father had already put in. He and others had thought George’s whiskey dreams were just dreams. They had a choice to make - sell the half-constructed distillery, or try to make a go of it. Gareth, Angela, and Maggie decided to give it a shot. “I was very naive at the time,” explains Gareth. “I figured like, where’s the On button? Let’s make some booze.” he says with a laugh.
Construction went on, restarting in 2013 and finally finishing up in 2015. Gareth had gone into the process in 2013 with a mix of naivete and confidence, feelings he suspected George may have shared towards the project. “This is easy. Whiskey? Are you kidding me? This is gonna be simple.” he thought. The more Gareth learned about whiskey, the more he realized it wasn’t nearly as simple as he’d imagined. Before they even began to produce whiskey, he needed to make a plan to keep the business forging ahead. Instead of choosing to build up a large supply of product, they focused their efforts on introducing an imported, blended product, opening their visitor’s center, and getting a tasting room set up. In our interview, Gareth is quick to acknowledge he was not the sole decision maker for the business. “When I said I changed the business plan because I’m very smart and very financially minded,” he says with a twinkle in his eye, “You probably smelled the bullshit. It was definitely my wife, supported by my mother.” he explains. With Maggie’s efforts bringing the visitor’s center to life and Angela at work on the brand (Angela has a background in marketing, and serves as Chairwoman at Virginia Distillery Company), Virginia Distillery Company was on its way.
The next hurdle they had to tackle was making a single malt whisky far from the foggy isles of Scotland that inspired the late George Moore. The climate in Virginia, by contrast, is far more variable. As Gareth succinctly puts it, “In Virginia, it gets cold as sh*t and hot as f*ck.” The temperature changes would have a dramatic effect on fermentation, one that they’d have to anticipate and control for in order to get the whisky they wanted. At first, they had planned to try climate-controlled warehouses. This option was scrapped as prohibitively expensive. As luck would have it, a business school friend of Gareth’s was familiar with Kavalan whisky, a Taiwanese single malt. He knew of a whisky wizard that worked with them and was famous for his touch with warm-weather maturation techniques. That wizard was Dr. Jim Swan.
If you’re picturing Gandalf or Dumbledore, let us reframe your mental image. Dr. Swan, nicknamed by admiring ladies “The Scottish Soap Star”, was a vibrant, handsome man with a thick head of cropped white hair who bore more resemblance to a classic film star than a berobed elder. He is a legend in the whisky industry, and shared his Midas touch with distilleries all over the world. Gareth jumped at the chance to hire him, and Dr. Swan consulted for Virginia Distillery Company three times. Tragically, with his plane tickets already in hand for his planned fourth trip, he passed away suddenly at his home. “In classic Virginia Distillery style,” Gareth describes it with a bit of gallows humor.
“Don’t change your maturation environment to match your distillate, change your distillate to match your maturation environment.”
Dr. Swan’s advice for Virginia Distillery was rooted in four concepts. “He had a series of secret tricks that we absolutely can’t divulge...” begins Gareth, before going on with a grin and joking laugh. “No, we say ‘em all on the tour.” The first important piece of Dr. Swan’s process is a clear wort. “Early malt distilleries in warm climates, such as in India during the days of the British Empire, were known for ‘flat’ or ‘bland’ whiskies that were dominated by unattractive cereal flavors. These unattractive flavors would normally be removed in the wood by lengthy maturation in a cool weather climate, but warm weather climates have a faster maturation schedule.” Gareth explains. Dr. Swan liked to use a slower mashing cycle in order to get rid of those unwanted cereal flavors that wouldn’t disappear in a shorter period of time. He also liked to use two types of yeast, one more standard type for yield and another to produce specific esters. Like many other distillers, Virginia Distillery emphasizes the importance of tight cuts. As Gareth explains, though, “It’s not so much the tightness of the cut, it’s the timing of the cut.” The last important piece of the process is the three different cask types Virginia Distillery uses. Their distillate is split and matured between 50% former bourbon casks, 25% former sherry casks, and 25% ‘STR’ or ‘shaved, toasted, and recharred’ wine casks.
Why did Virginia Distillery go with the ratio of 50-25-25? Such a mix is less common than say, 75% bourbon barrels and 12.5% each of sherry and STR. Gareth tells us the answer is simply to get better flavor. He recalls a conversation with Dr. Swan about the barrels; as Dr. Swan explained the benefits and the ratio recommended, something clicked for Gareth. He asked, if that ratio is good, wouldn’t 50-25-25 be even better? He was right; Dr. Swan gleefully embraced the chance to use the more even ratio despite the higher expense. To Gareth, it made sense to invest in such an important part of the process in order to create the highest quality they possibly could.
Gareth’s interest in the ratio of cask types might have tipped you off that he’s a data aficionado like his father George. He speaks enthusiastically of rigorously about their approach to chemical analysis. In the beginning, they’d take 200 milliliter samples for weekly testing, and Gareth would carefully check the markers of the different chemical components to make sure the whisky was taking shape in the way he meant it to. Eventually the tests moved to biweekly, then monthly, as they became confident things were going in the right direction. “That’s how you make sure the distillate you’re producing is going to hit what you’re aiming for.” he tells us. He’s been diligently collecting every data point he can about their product, and you can see it all on the Batch Info section of Virginia Distillery’s website. “I wanted to put that stuff out a little more raw,” he confesses, “The marketing people wouldn’t have it. They were like ‘you’re not going to put Excel files out there.’” he laughs.
Some would ask Gareth ‘but how do you know if it tastes good?’ He responds with a sardonic, humorous answer. “Clearly you need somebody that’s wearing a kilt, and he has to be on a unicorn at the top of Ben Nevis, and there’s a rainbow, and he sniffs it [the whisky] and he says, ‘Ooh, that’s the stuff!” Jokes aside, Gareth does truly believe that mastering the science of whisky is integral to Virginia Distillery’s process. “There are parts of the process that require sensory [evaluation], that’s towards the end, but on the front end you can use numbers.” he assures us.
“Success is not making something that copies the Old World, but [something] that puts the American imprimatur on it.”
Science alone does not make great whisky, and Gareth knows this. He freely admits to being something of a stranger to the artistic side of distilling. “I don’t really have a very good sensory palate, and I can recognize that.” he says. “Turns out women do much better.” he adds with a smile. He praises the palate of Virginia Distillery’s Lead Blender, Amanda Beckwith, and Master Blender Nancy Fraley, who worked with Virginia Distillery in a consultant role. He still does his best to fit the data into the overall picture; he asks Amanda and the other employees participating in sensory evaluations to use a rating system, and he tracks those ratings as rigorously as the chemical compound data the lab gives him. Even then, he drives his tasters batty by playing tricks designed to trip up an insincere sensory evaluation. He will add food coloring to a sample so it’s the same shade as another, different, sample. He has also been known to mix whisky from other brands into the samples. He recalls with amusement the first time his employees came to him and said ‘something is really wrong with this batch,’ and he fessed up to having been the one tampering with it. He says they always catch his shenanigans, and explains why he does it. “It [the distillate] goes up the hill to the warehouses for 4, 5, 6 years and that’s where my Excel spreadsheets suddenly go to shit.” he tells us. “When Excel can’t get the answer for you, and you know your palate’s not going to get there...those are the ways you get comfort. You try to challenge people.” There is one area in which he’s firmly confident when it comes to his own palate, however. “I can taste a Dr. Swan whisky from very far away.” he says.
As the first-generation son of immigrants, Gareth is conscious of the ways in which Virginia Distillery blends together tradition and innovation. “It’s really interesting to think about how in the U.S. we have–I mean we’re a land of immigrants–but we consume all these products from the Old World that came to the New World that we made our own.” A prime example of that kind of hybrid invention was apparent in his father’s speech; after decades in America, his accent started to shift into something that was neither Irish nor American. “His [George’s] dad told him, when we was coming here…’these Yanks don’t say hello like you or I would. They say howdy.’ So my dad always said ‘howdy’.” Gareth recalls.
He never let Virginia Distillery throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, and forget all the traditions that have been working so well for Scotch whisky for centuries. “Everything about our equipment, there’s nothing new about our equipment. If you go to Scotland or Ireland, it looks the same.” he tells us. “Anything that we’ve done different is more a result of the climate than anything else.” he explains. Every building on campus is a ‘house’, and their 10,000 liter still system is a traditional shape and size made by Northern Fabricators in Elgin. Virginia Distillery remains committed to George’s dream of making a great American single malt. Gareth serves as Treasurer for the American Single Malt Commission, of which Virginia Distillery has been a member since 2016. “We believe we are on the verge of formal recognition of the category,” he says, in reference to the definition proposed by the commission to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.
“We’re not planting a tulip. We’re planting an oak tree.”
Gareth is a former president of the Virginia Distillers Association. From time to time, someone would grumblingly ask why Virginia Distillery Company had ‘taken’ that name. He’s quick to point out he didn’t choose it; his father did. When he, Angela, and Maggie took George’s nascent dream and ran with it, they kept the name George had chosen. He was a longtime resident of Virginia, and loved his adopted country. Gareth believes it was a little bit of a tribute to Virginia itself, and a little bit of the fact that no one else had trademarked it and George could therefore scoop it up. He also knows the simplicity of the name would have appealed to his data-driven dad; it says exactly what it is. George also deliberately chose to use the term ‘distillery’ to echo the names of the great whisky distilleries of Scotland. Gareth notes that most American distilleries will have ‘distilling’ in the name instead. A small difference, but a detail that mattered to George and one of the many factors that make up the Virginia Distillery brand.
When Angela, Gareth, and Maggie were first getting started, they took notes from their neighbors. “We visited all these local businesses, and we realized to create a brand you have to have a home and a heart of a brand.” While Maggie tackled the Visitor Center and Angela worked on the marketing, Gareth had a mystery of his own to solve. He knew his father had a supplier in mind for the whisky intended to become a component of their blended product, but he didn’t know who it was. George had a maddening habit of offering a taste of his whiskey, but only revealing the name of the distillery if the drinker could guess correctly. It was a social exercise meant to show off George’s palate prowess. With Gareth’s admitted palate challenges, he couldn’t guess the name of George’s chosen supply - and George passed away unexpectedly without getting a chance to reveal it. After exhausting all other avenues, Gareth finally found the name of the distillery written on an old bill of lading. “I didn’t know what a bill of lading was back then. Now I have to deal with bills of lading all the time.” he chuckles.
The feed stock whisky secured, Virginia Distillery did what so many craft distilleries must do in those first lean years; it blended that stock with however much of their own product they had available. In the early times, Gareth said it was a thimbleful of their product in the blend; these days it’s more like fifty-fifty. Their VHW series of whiskeys was a hit, winning awards and scoring high points from critics. Today they offer versions aged in cider casks, beer barrels, port casks, and more. With the blended product selling well and their in-house single malt being laid down cask by cask to mature, they needed to start the process of branding that flagship product.
If you’ve tried Virginia Distillery’s products or visited their website, you know one of George G. Moore’s favorite pearls of wisdom to share was ‘Have the courage of your convictions.” When the team was trying to come up with the perfect name for what would be the realization of George’s single malt dream, they went through some duds. Gareth shared a few examples with us, off the record - we can confidently say the whisky wouldn’t have had nearly the same branding punch if it had ended up with one of the runners-up. On the batch labels for the VHW series behind the scenes, the team had been putting that quote from George as a tribute and a reminder. The branding manager saw the batch labels, and said ‘Why don’t we just use that?’ At first, Gareth felt that oft-repeated phrase of his father’s was almost too personal to use. After considering how people loved the phrase and how it reminded them of George, he realized it was a perfect fit. Virginia Distillery’s painstakingly crafted American single malt whisky finally had its name: Courage & Conviction.
If you compare the VHW line with the Courage & Conviction line, you’ll notice the bottles and labels are quite different. VHW is a classic bottle shape with a mountain scene rising at the back of the label and Virginia Distillery’s logo emblazoned in copper. The label colors vary with the different offerings within the series. Courage & Conviction’s look, on the other hand, is unique and something Gareth and the team spent more time on. An 18-month process of obtaining custom glass yielded the ‘Superman’ bottle, which is broad at the top and tapered towards the bottom with a short neck. In an unusual move, Virginia Distillery made the seal with its logo and name of the whiskey into an actual magnet. It sits right where the Superman logo would go on the bottle’s ‘chest’, and provides an attractive raised design note that turns into a surprise souvenir for the consumer. “As I told my son, as they came out...that if you love something to play with, like magnets, you just have to make millions of them. And give them away.” Gareth says with a small smile.
“What does it mean, have the courage of your convictions? If you really believe in something, then let that be the force that powers you to do something.”
Gareth, Angela, and Maggie, all brand new to the whisky business, had poured themselves into making George’s final project a successful one. With the help of industry experts and their employees, they had overcome all the challenges thrown in their path from George’s death in 2013 onward. They had been gearing up to launch their flagship single malt since they had started to lay it down in 2015, and April 2020 was fast approaching. Then, two weeks before their launch date, the world simply stopped. Fear reigned, society ground to a halt, and they had no idea how Courage & Conviction could be successful under those conditions. It was time to stand by what they believed in, and they believed in George’s whisky.
As tasting rooms became inoperable due to the risk of contagion and distilleries everywhere had to rely on full-bottle retail sales to keep their whiskey inventory moving, Virginia Distillery had to figure out how to get potential customers to try their new flagship product. Gareth had it; they would make 50 milliliter bottles. These airplane-sized mini bottles would help them get Courage & Conviction onto people’s palates, letting the world know Virginia Distillery had something really special to share. There was just one problem: anyone with the kind of bottling equipment that could fill a 1.7 oz bottle had pivoted to helping with the manufacture of hand sanitizer. Confidence in the quality of their product was so high, Virginia Distillery bought its own equipment, representing about a $50,000 investment. “[We were] maybe bolstered by the confidence that if it doesn’t work, society’s over anyway.” Gareth jokes. He filled bottle after bottle after bottle of Courage & Conviction, and simply began giving it away. In 2020, Virginia Distillery gave away 120,000 50ml bottles of it.
At the time of this writing, the fall of 2021 looks vastly different from that ‘horrifying’ spring. We have a vaccine, masks and social distancing have become regular parts of life, and Courage & Conviction is a resounding success. Gareth gained Virginia Distillery “a reputation in the market for standing behind it [their whisky]. For pushing forward where others aren’t.” This year’s data reflects the payoff behind Gareth’s great gamble: Virginia Distillery’s growth for 2021 is a beautiful ‘hockey stick’ shape that the data-loving CEO giddily traces in the air for us. Through the pandemic, forced furloughs, the arrival of the Moores’ third child, and the intangible fear and tension that lay over a world that didn’t know what would happen next, Virginia Distillery kept testing, tasting, nurturing and finally launching its whisky. “I like to think of that kind of being the embodiment of having the courage of your convictions.” Gareth says. We think Dr. Moore would agree.
TASTING NOTES
Courage & Conviction (46% ABV)
Nose: Apple Juice, Floral Honey, Prunes, Black Pepper
Palate: The mouthfeel is silky smooth. Sweet up front like a sugar cookie. Subtle burnt caramel leads to mild spices in the mid-palate, leaving some black pepper on a medium finish with granny smith apple and honey.
The nose jumps out of the glass and the sweetness is intoxicating. It invites you to taste it and the flavors live up to the nose. This is a very delicate, sweet and well balanced single malt that stands up to most others we have tasted.
Courage & Conviction Bourbon Cask (46% ABV)
Nose: Fresh Apples, Vanilla, French Toast
Palate: The mouthfeel is soft and a bit thinner. Still sweet up front with similar vanilla notes. The spice comes in again in the mid-palate but plays a bit stronger here. Black pepper and clove dominate on a medium finish as the vanilla flavor comes back around, mixed with oak.
This is another very solid single malt. It has a bit more bite to it than the flagship and is slightly less balanced but still stands strong on its own.
Courage & Conviction Sherry Cask (46% ABV)
Nose: Figs, Prunes, Overripe Banana, Vanilla
Palate: The mouthfeel is similar to the others. The sweetness up front is reminiscent of blueberry or cherry pie. Baked fruit with brown sugar and vanilla. Less spice on the palate. More oak and wood in the mid palate mixing with dark chocolate and banana on a medium finish.
You can tell that a lot of the intoxicating aromas and sweet fruit flavor in the flagship come from this sherry cask finished single malt. Though not as well balanced, this single malt is just as inviting and very satisfying.
Courage & Conviction Cuvée Cask (46% ABV)
Nose: Dark Cherries, Rolling Tobacco, Dark Chocolate, Briney
Palate: The mouthfeel is a bit sharper with some heat. Licorice up front, with notes of cherry. Sweet fruit gives way to bitter melon and spice with leather, pepper and smoke on the long finish.
This single malt is less delicate than the others. It has a big body with big flavors. It’s a unique and intriguing single malt on it’s own, offering dynamic flavors that continually evolve across the palate.