Author: James H. Moore

Core Values of Engineered Spirits

I grew up on the farm and there were many tasks that had to be done every day, depending on the season. In late fall and winter and into spring you fed cows, cut wood and made sure there was enough wood in the house to last a few days in case it rained or snowed. Spring was the time to check fences and plant gardens, and summer was time to pick a lot of vegetables and haul hay. Fall came back around and we were harvesting crops, saving seeds and looking after the cows again.

By the time I was 13, no one had to tell me to bring in wood, roam the forest to find cows that didn’t show up at feeding time, or walk the garden to pick ripe vegetables. Dad was a full-time engineer and, in winter, he didn’t get home till after dark. Mom was an accountant, so the first part of every year, she was working late to get everyone’s taxes done. They didn’t have to wonder if there was wood in the house, if cows were being fed and found, and the furnace was being banked to keep us warm. They didn’t tell me to do these things, and I didn’t consider them chores. I did these things because they were an integral part of farm life and needed to be done. No one else was there to do them. They could trust that these things would be taken care of and they didn’t have to worry.

For someone to be considered trustworthy, they must perform well time and time again.. The things they are doing, the results they are producing must meet or exceed your expectations. You don’t have to worry about them. Our distillery will be small, and pretty much every product will be single barrel or small batch. The only way for us to  perform well time and time again is to keep detailed logs, noting variables like the temperature outside and whether it is raining. These are very much like the inspection logs I had to keep while monitoring construction projects for roads and utilities. 

So, while a lot of our runs may be unique amongst the brandies and seasonal gins  we are looking to provide, we hope when you see our label you’ll know you can trust what we put in the bottle. What you’re drinking may be new and possibly one of a kind, but you’ll know that the water is chemical free and the fruit and grains, if not grown on the farm, are sourced as close to home as possible, from people we trust and can tell you all about. 

Core Values of Engineered Spirits

To assess the quality of something, a person typically assigns a value to it. This value doesn’t necessarily need to be money, but it usually costs something to get something. I would say that quality is important, but it is up to the provider of something to tell the world why it’s special.

The farm I grew up on is special. It has abundant natural resources that are as Nature intended them and we plan to keep it that way. We didn’t grow up using herbicides or pesticides on our crops. My mother and I were the herbicide and the pesticide. Getting up early to go out with her in the fields, pulling out the weeds, removing the tobacco worms by hand before it got too hot, or chopping down the thistles with shovels. It was work and it took time and a lot of energy, but it also had other benefits, like keeping me out of trouble. There is a quality of life that is special there, and we intend to keep that quality of work and life moving forward.

Quality ingredients make quality food and beverages. I like to know the provenance of the ingredients in anything I make. I’m pretty picky about vegetables and beef. If you have trained your eye to look for the characteristics of what makes good ingredients, half the product is already made. Our farm’s spring water has enough minerals to provide great nutrients for the yeasts we intend to use and a neutral pH. So it is of good quality. We may use UV lights to treat it, but we won’t add anything to it that would change the flavor, such as salts to manage hardness, or chlorine. And luckily, it runs all year.

We are always looking at ways to improve. But there are lines we won’t cross. We look forward to trying new methods to grow the ingredients we need without all the chemicals. Will it mean we have to grow 10% more so that Nature gets her share? Probably. But if we can protect the soil and water for the future, I guess that groundhog can have a couple ears of corn.

Core Values of Engineered Spirits

I believe that ingenuity is a skill that can be learned. 

Having ingenuity means you have the ability and the desire to question. For most of my life, I have been notoriously annoying for asking lots of questions. I always want to understand why something was done a certain way. When someone says “because that’s the way we’ve always done it,” I see opportunities for improving. Asking why and exploring what has changed in the last ten years or so can lead to exciting things that may be able to drive the idea, process, or product to a new place. 

I’m not saying tradition doesn’t have its place. It always helps to remember where we came from and why things were done the way they were, so we can always look back on what we have learned. And sometimes that chocolate pie recipe just can’t be made better than Granny made it.

I grew up watching my family solve everyday problems on the farm and it was almost always something different. A different day, a different problem, a different solution. From figuring out how best to lay out a fence, fix a hay baler, or how best to preserve our produce from the garden, we were always thinking about the solutions to these everyday problems, since there was so much work to do. 

When I was fifteen, I had to put up a fence by myself and run a quarter mile of wire. So, I did what I was taught and looked at what I had. I had a six-foot tall steel post, three 40-pound rolls of sharp, barbed wire, and a pickup truck. I could have carried those rolls of wire by hand, walking or rolling them, as I had been taught to do, but I had an idea. I tied the post across the bed of the truck, put the roll of wire on it, secured the end to a post and took off driving. That wire unwound itself and it was a lot less effort, a lot less time, and I ended up with the same result. 

I use that same approach to many things I do now, from fixing light switches to cooking. What do I want as the end result? Who am I serving? Whatever it is, it has to be good, not just to me, but to them. 

At Engineered Spirits, we will put this thought process into every product. We will stick with tradition by having good, locally-grown ingredients. We will use those as simply and efficiently as possible to make a product that we want you to love. And we will look to the future and other innovative ingredients we can use to make beverages we hope you’ll love just as much. 

Core Values of Engineered Spirits

When I think of rugged people, the first thing that always comes to my mind are the characters in westerns. Some of the first I saw growing up were John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. I can’t forget to mention Sam Elliot; his voice alone just drips a sense of ruggedness. The modern western railroad drama “Hell on Wheels” showed the rugged men and women of westward expansion in a great tale of human vs. human, human vs. machine, and human vs. his environment. They all faced challenges. We all do today. 

Challenges are relative. We all have some degree of talent to do things, but not everything we do is easy. Nor should it be. So, what makes someone rugged? Someone who will do something that’s hard, and probably fail at first, or at least not achieve exactly what they hoped. My first attempt using alternatives to sugar for molten chocolate cakes was probably the worst thing I ever made, but I kept trying. Six tries later, they were pretty good. But I don’t think just figuring out how to make sugar-free molten chocolate cake means I’m rugged. 

You don’t have to be a railroad worker or a farmer, a mountaineer or an explorer to be rugged. I think that being rugged means you have a dream you are working toward that will be difficult. It will not happen overnight, and it will cost more than just money along the way. You may have to struggle. You may have to endure some hardships. You may have to fight many uphill battles. You may get knocked down and have to start over again. And you may also have to learn some things and pick up another dream along the way.

Ruggedness is continuing to try even when things get tough. Pushing yourself physically, mentally, emotionally. Working to do something that could even surprise you in the end, that you didn’t expect. And that’s what we are doing here.

Currently, we are wrapping up the purchase of the land. There’s a lot of emotion, it’s family land. We are working hard, and there’s a whole lot more work to do. Determining how to finance the distillery in this economic environment will be difficult. But we are researching every opportunity to not only end up where we want to be, but to do so in a sustainable, responsible, mindful way. That’s definitely not the easiest path for making a distillery and most people wouldn’t even consider it right now. 

But that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to work with the land we have, the farm that we love and we are going to make a product that celebrates those who share those same values. 

We will be rugged.