Diary of a Distiller

So, last week I showed you a gallery of photos of us framing out walls, putting up drywall, prepping them, and priming the paint. This week I will show you how we painted the future Penobscot Bay Distillery & Brewery at Winterport Winery. Because we have windows on the second floor of Pairings Food and Wine Culinary & Education Center looking down into the distillery, we decided to splash a little color around. The main outside wall we left a nice crisp white. This wall is where we will have all the equipment stationed and a plain and simple background will be best to showcase all the copper, stainless steel, and brick nicely.

Follow up:

The interior as a whole was mind-numbingly bright and white. I felt like an Oompa Loompa in Willy Wonka's factory working in the TV Room. (Especially the Gene Wilder version, which I feel caught the original book better than the Depp version.) It was scary how white and bright the room was, so we decided to splash some color around. We looked at color chips for a week or so, and then went with ones that we felt portrayed the image of various of the "Brown" spirits. Scotch, Bourbon, Rye, Cognac, Rum, etc. Then we threw a pair of accent lamps on the wall with aim-able lights to leave on at night for a soft glow of the equipment.

Yes, I know this is a commercial /industrial facility. But I'm the one who is going to have to be in there for hours and hours each day. So much so, that I am setting up a office in the distillery so I can write and do other business while the still chugs along. With distilling slow is good, but since a run can take twelve hours I need some way to keep my sanity. So an interesting and calming paint job, plus the ability to kick back and write for you guys, seems to be a working solution. Of course there was another reason we wanted to have a nice paint job for the facility... (At the end of this post is a series of photos of the distillery in progress.)

Last February I was out for a drive, enjoying the weather and looking for action. It was an early Saturday afternoon and the weather was crisp, cold, and clear. I had just finished a nice, hot, thick, meaty, bowl of braised pork and root veggies, when I decided to head up to Camden, ME for the 18th Annual U. S. National Toboggan Championships at the Camden Snow Bowl. I was looking for something to write about and I was dressed for the cold, and well armed with my cameras and lenses. Camden is a 15 minute drive straight up Route 1, so the Snow Bowl is just a short jaunt away. As I was driving through Rockport I saw a whole bunch of signs standing on the side of the road, spread out along 100 yards of Route 1. I slowed down to read them as I drove by.

"Stop!" "Everybody has a Story" "There's Nothing Like a Good Story" "Tell Me Your Story" "Roadside Stories Ahead"

I drove slowly past and at the end of the trail of signs I saw some guy sitting on the tailgate of a pickup. I was going to drive on, but since I was out looking for things to write about I decided, "What the heck," and did a u-turn and pulled over. Maybe it was some religious group preaching or doing roadside counseling? Who knows, but it was sure to be interesting.

As I got out of my car and walked over, a camera man jumped out of the woods and started filming me. The guy on the pickup introduced himself as Bob Wilson, and that they were filming a TV series called Roadside Stories, that airs on PBS throughout New England.

The premise is that Bob sits roadside and interviews anyone who has the guts or curiosity to stop and say hi. If their story is interesting he spends some time with them and the show is about their story. I had never heard of the show, but I hopped up on the tailgate and chatted with Bob while we were taped. He proceeded to ask me questions about my life, profession, hobbies and interests, etc. After around 20 minutes I mentioned that I was headed to the Toboggan Championships and Bob asked if he could join me and continue taping for a few hours. I agreed and he hopped in my car with a mini-cam while the camera guy followed in the pickup truck.

We got to the Snow Bowl, parked, and started wandering out to the frozen lake that was the end of the toboggan run. We figured that would be a good place to start taping scenes for the show. As we got closer we saw and heard a huge commotion going on. Ambulance sirens were sounding off in the distance, and rapidly getting louder and closer. Snowmobiles started going by pulling stretchers with injured people on them, taking them to meet the ambulances that were pulling up over on the shoreline. Down the road aways a Life Flight medical emergency helicopter started to land. We asked what was going on and a bystander said that somehow one of the toboggans carrying four people had over-turned in the chute, and accidentally another four person toboggan was sent down and they all collided at 40+ miles an hour. It was such a disaster that after discussion, Bob and I agreed that it wasn't a good time to be filming the TV show. He asked me to meet him the next day to continue taping the show and I said yes. Thankfully, it turned out that the injuries weren't life threatening, although there were some broken bones. If you want to read the accident report it is posted here and some articles are here.

The next day we met up and started taping again. We visited several food booths and taught Bob how to shuck raw oysters and then he slurped down a few, much to my amusement. It's always fun to watch a raw oyster neophyte as their first few slide down their throats. then we made our way to a few booths where there was a Chowder and chili competition. We scored bowls of all the chowders and chili's and proceeded to do our own judging and review. One of the chefs in the competition was a friend of mine, Josh Gamage of Maine Coast Catering, and also an instructor at the local tech school for their culinary program. I had been invited to speak there for a few classes and so it was good to see him. I had been discussing with him that he come to work for our restaurant, culinary school, and other projects; but he was so busy with his own business that he had declined. It turned out he had some of the best entries in the competition.

After that we wandered around talking and meddling and having a ball. All the time with the camera running. we spent several hours all told, with the climax being invited to take several runs down the the mountain in the toboggan competition. That as lots of fun, and I yelled at the top of my lungs the whole way down each time, as we sped along at 40-50 miles an hour.

After the day of taping, Bob asked if he could come back in a few months and visit me at the Winterport Winery and Penobscot Bay Distillery & Brewery. He wanted to tape an entire episode of the show just about me.

I'm no fool and of course I said yes.

Six weeks later, in early April, our still had just been delivered. Bob just happened to call that week to check on our status and said he would be up that weekend to tape. So we rushed to finish painting the distillery and before we even had a chance to uncrate the still, Bob and company showed up and spent the day at our facility. I showed him around the winery and our culinary center/school, told him about what we were doing, played with some infused spirits I had been experimenting with, and then headed into the future distillery.

There we had a blast, as Bob, as well as my partners Mike, Jody, and I; all uncrated the still and assorted equipment. I never saw so much biodegradable pink packing popcorn in my life! It was flying all over the place. Finally after a few hours we got everything uncrated and set up the still to see what it looked like. I discussed it and how distilling worked, then told him about my future plans for the distillery. Eventually we wrapped up taping and called it a day. All told, it was a really great experience, and a major rush. I was high off it for weeks afterward.

A week later I was down in NYC taping a ten minute spot on a radio show with my friend Mike Colamecco, who I met at the Head to Tail Dinner I wrote abote a few months ago, Mike Collameco's Food Talk on WOR, about artisanal spirits. I was a bit bummed because I had been so stressed during the radio show that I had called one spirit company by the name of a different, but similar sounding company. I hate making mistakes like that, but the show had been forced time-wise and I hadn't had time to settle my thoughts for even a moment before being rushed in to the studio.

This was my second experience with being on the radio and an extreme contrast with the relaxed and well planned out two hour taping of a local, Bangor, ME based business show, Back to Business, hosted by Deb Neuman. Back to Business is a great show and has some of the best episodes available as pod-casts on their websites, including the episode I was on about food businesses and food entrepreneurs.

Anyway, so I was kind of bummed out from the Food Talk radio show when Bob Wilson gave me a call. It seems that when they got back to the production company the production team said I was a natural on TV, and the camera man agreed. He said that he never had to stop shooting to get me into the best location, that I just naturally moved there. So Bob asked me if I wanted to host my own TV series! We spent several weeks talking about it, designing the show, arranging for guests chefs and mixologists, food writers and celebrities. It seems that the show is going to start taping next fall. Whoda thunk I'd have a TV show one day? I'll keep you posted about the series as it develops.

For those of you Slashfoodies in New England, you will be able to catch me on Roadside Stories Episode 207 on PBS which starts airing mid-June 2008, with lots of late night repeats.