Hoot and Howl
Noun
The sounds of the woods late at night.
A distillery which approaches every aspect of spirit production with relentless curiosity, commitment, and innovation in order to deliver spirits that are unparalleled in quality and taste.
Verb
To live one’s life in a manner such that spontaneous and uncontrollable sounds of joy escape one’s mouth, often while outside with friends or when unable to express one’s excitement through words.
Our Story is better told over a glass of whiskey…
We are firm believers in going all in.
No half ass-ing and definitely no lily dipping - if we are going to do something, we are going to do it right. That is how our company came to be. We saw a lot of distilleries doing things mostly right, but very few doing everything right from start to finish. We understood why, it takes more time, more money, better technology, and certainly more desire, but we thought we’d try anyways.
Some of us started as brewers, trying to make the best lagers in the world. Our process started with a history lesson and a trip to Germany. We learned how the monks brewed beer gentler, buried it in mountain caves to achieve the perfect temperature, and used natural processes and ingredients to add flavor instead of preservatives and additives. Then we went to the premier stainless steal and copper manufacturers in the world to match the most advanced technology with these time honored processes.
When our master distiller joined us, we repeated the whole process with whiskeys and botanical spirits. We experienced that distilling off grain with a slower temperature curve adds more subtle flavors and that every barrel must be uniquely raised, not thrown in a rick house to be forgot about for years.
What does this all come down to? A process.
Hit the library. We find every historical recipe and process for any spirit that we make. There are so many cool and lost spirits from old world Europe and Asia that are just as good, if not better than today’s spirits. Use this as knowledge and inspiration.
Find the real experts. We won’t admit it freely, but we aren’t the experts in everything, so we bring in the best people we can for specific areas. For ingredients, we go to the people working with them every day - local farmers, horticulturalists and botanists. Whenever possible we work with a local botanist who shows us hyper local botanicals and plants to use in our spirits. Similarly, a barley farmer who has been growing the same crop for 20 years usually knows the fluctuations of each crop better than anyone else.
Build. Test. Taste. Repeat. Build. Test. Taste. Repeat. Build. Test. Taste. Repeat. We run our R&D still almost more than our production still because we are always tweaking, tinkering, hooting, and howling.
The Values That Motivate Us
Our vision is to create a distinctive and award winning American Single Malt Whiskey while producing premium and unique European inspired spirits, aperitifs, and liqueurs.
Remain a stable family business
Our family business is one of passion. We are dedicated to sharing this great human adventure, and our missions if to create value and experiences for the people who use our products.
Insist on excellence
We believe that fine spirits begin with quality ingredients, disruptive production practices, and smooth flavor profiles. We are dedicated to upholding these criteria through every stage of the distilling process, and we approach our work with scrappy determination to achieve these goals in the most eco-friendly way possible.
Curious about convention
We are not bound by convention and believe that most of our success - and fun - comes from our curiosity and willingness to develop new ways to do things. We want to explore these new routes and innovations, on product, on process, and on sustainability.
Do right by people
We make spirits to bring people together, but our commitment to people extends far beyond our products. We believe in doing right by everyone we encounter, whether they are our employees, partners, or members of the communities in which we operate. We are passionate about investing in the well-being of our team and promoting a culture of social responsibility across our business.
