In 2005, when Harvest Spirits owner Derek Grout began working on an idea to use the surplus apples at his family’s Golden Harvest Farm (in Valatie, NY) to make vodka and brandy, the plan was ingenious and illegal. Over the next few years he lobbied Albany with the Farm Bureau to receive the first farm distillers license in the state. Now there are more than 50 operations in New York, but it’s hard to beat the original, especially with the stellar new whiskey launched in February. I kind of go to work like a baker. I work just about every day doing exactly what I want to do. I don’t like to use the word pride but there is a gratification from growing your own product and seeing how much you can do with what you’re given. I own the business outright with my wife Ashley and we run it like a team. We’re independently distributed and we are on the family farm. It’s important to me that we own every aspect of the product soup to nuts.
We started with our signature Core Vodka and soon added Cornelius Apple Jack, a number of fruit infused unique brandies and Vodkas, to our family of products (we've also added two boys to our nuclear family). Almost every piece of fruit we've ever used in our process comes from the fields out behind the distillery and the few that weren't were grown on a farm nearby. In February we released our John Henry Whiskey. We started the process over two years ago and we put a lot of work into getting it right. I wanted to make a Scottish-style whiskey that’s true to what we’ve been doing here all along. For part of the process we age the whiskey in applejack barrels so it picks up a slight fruitiness and because we are using brandy stills there’s a slightly more refined taste. It’s a whiskey that tastes like our brand, like our farm. We may have been the first farm distillery in the state but now there are a lot of operations, and you’ll find them everywhere from the Great Lakes to Brooklyn. I treat the competition with a great deal of respect because I know what they’re going through. I continue to be impressed by the whiskeys and brandies. There has been some desire to make a “Hudson Valley style" but it’s impossible because we all do things so differently. The only thing they have in common is that they’re all pretty good. Distilling is hard work but to be in this place, with my family, making something of a high quality, is all anyone could ask for.
