What's shaking at the Tasting Room?  Check it out! Updated January 17, 2009


The Maharaja Martini                              The Javatini                              The Hot Mon-Toddy



The Montanya Mojo                        The Marrakech Martini



The Gingerlee                              The Eggnoggin



Caribbean Rum Punch                          Siracha Sour

We have been devising and testing some exceptional rum cocktail recipes and the results are very exciting.  Our favorite of the weekend is the QingPing - which takes inspiration from the spice markets of Guangzhou in southern China (pictured to the right).  Imagine a cocktail with fresh lime and Montanya Oro rum, with the flavors of 5 exotic spices, rimmed with spiced sugar, for a perfect balance between sweet and spicy.  We also concocted the Kashmir-tini, which is made with Montanya Oro Rum, a spice blend inspired by the authentic chai flavors of Northern India, served garnished with a cardamom pod.   Our Hot Buttered Rum, which we mixed last night, is blended with real butter, brown sugar and all-natural vanilla ice cream.  Decadent!  Get ready for the Montanya Mojo, which is a fresh spin on the Mojito - with homemade ginger beer.  You can always get the standards like the Mojito and Cuba Libre, but we are really excited to offer a menu of fresh, unique and paradigm-shifting rum cocktails.  Starting this Saturday, we will be open from 4-7pm Thursday-Saturday for Tastings and Tours. (Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, New Year's Day)     

Photographer Bruce Conrad came by and took some great photos at the Distillery, shown off at the very top of this page.

Must be time for a GRAND OPENING CELEBRATION!  November 15th, 2008 starting at 6pm.  Minister of Rum - you are cordially invited!  Oh and welcome to Delena Aseere - Official Pirate-ess, Barkeep and Assistant Distiller at Montanya Distillers. 
 

We hung our new sign this weekend.  The creation of this sign was a labor of love that Brice and Karen undertook together from the creation of the vector logo to the programming of the CNC router (courtesy of our other company Mountain Boy Sledworks) and the final sanding, painting and finishing.  It is even hung straight!

We were searching around for sealed containers to store our tails for redistilling.  Karen dreamed of using the beautiful stainless steel containers that milkmen in India carry.  Several hours later, Brice found them on the internet and not long after, they were delivered.  What did start-ups do before Google, Amazon and the Internet?   

We were interviewed today by reporter Dave Thomas for American Distiller.  We are looking forward to reading his article and seeing his photos in an upcoming issue.   We are also looking forward to an open house/grand opening/tasting event in November.  We'll keep everyone posted.  Maybe we'll invite the Minister of Rum! 
      

We are going to make our own ginger beer for Mountain Mojo's in the distillery tasting room.  We are going to plant a few big mint plants in the back yard of the distillery to be able to harvest for Mojitos.  No chance of a lime tree at this crazy elevation.

Our first advertising hits the racks in the October issue of the Mountain Gazette.  It's probably crazy since we have no rum and no tasting room yet, but we are taking the chance on it all coming together in time to keep the buzz building. 

We ran a cleaning distillation, which offered us a delicious (not!) rye flour-flavored distilled water as the final product.  Oh, how tantalizing to have it fired up and have water come out!  We are dying to get out of this bureaucratic morass and into the the distilling trenches.  Soon...very soon.  

At the distillery, we are ready to go. The still is installed, fermenters are prepared, Woodford Reserve barrels ready to be filled. We've been learning some tricks of the trade and are perfecting our wash (the fermented cane sugar juice), so now we are sure we can get good, pure flavor.

The still arrived!  We unpacked it this afternoon and put it together.  What a beauty!  It is in beautiful condition after the long trek across the Atlantic from Portugal.  We are so anxious to get it into action!! Patience...patience. 

We have been experimenting with the fermentation process in our basement.  After a few tries, we got what we think is a beautiful wash made with high-quality yeast and pure cane sugar.  The whole house smells like a distillery and we like it.

We met with our new landlords, who are very excited to support our outlandish venture.  The father of one of our landlords used to be a sugar producer in Cuba!  They are serious rum fans, which helped the overall negotiations considerably.  We discovered that the building, which looks curiously like a stick frame with stucco is actually a turn-of-the-century stone building with 2 1/2 foot thick walls.  What looks like stucco is actually cement.  This all bodes well for the fire code.          

Next steps include propane and water plumbing and construction of the brick and steel understructure for the still.  Then barrels, fermenting tanks, and lots and lots of CANE SUGAR!  Rum, here we come!  
 

Our 400-liter, as yet unnamed still. If you've got a recommendation, let us know because she needs a good name! The firebox is made from 100-year-old steel plate and chimney brick. 
info@montanyadistillers.com

We fired our first Alembic Still supplier in Portugal for being a jerk.  We are moving forward with Destilarias Eau-de-Vie just down the road and they are delightful.  The beauty of this Still is strictly a fringe benefit :) 

Our coffee table looks like a distiller's library, stacked with books about the chemistry and process of distilling.  We are novices, but nothing a little experimentation won't cure.

High points this month were talking shop with the pros at Peach Street Distillers in Palisade over Bloody Marys (made with Goat Vodka) and great music at the Silverton Jamboree. 

We found a great commercial space, negotiated a lease and got a preliminary nod from the Feds for the space. Onward!   
 

We have many ideas of ways to make our rum unique -- and know that the proof is in the pudding! We chose a unique Portuguese copper alembic pot still, much like the early settlers of the Caribbean used. This should give our rum a rich, full-bodied flavor, which is just what we want.
 

We'll keep our day jobs, but have high hopes that others will enjoy drinking Montanya as much as we are enjoying conceiving it.  By the way, we created a cocktail....

The Montanya Mojo

• 1 shot of Montanya Platino Rum (okay, you have our permission to substitute until you can buy ours)
• club soda or seltzer
• 1 oz. of homemade ginger beer (we use Jeffrey Morgenthaler's recipe posted on-line)
• juice of one whole lime
• lime wedge for garnish

Enjoy!
 

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