NANTUCKET, MASS. Whiskey's aging, drinks are ready

A small liquor empire produces beer, wine and spirits at a single location.
NANTUCKET, Mass. (AP) -- The fragrances of this monied island retreat are wild roses, ocean breezes and steaming lobsters.
But a different scent drifts from an old, weather-beaten barn on the edge of a flower-filled meadow near Nantucket's south shore. Jay Harman throws open the doors and the unmistakable whiff of single-malt whiskey spills out.
Inside, 63 oak barrels of 3-year-old "Notch" (only whiskey from Scotland can be called scotch) are aging in the musty confines of the barn. It's the most ambitious endeavor to date by a small liquor empire that has sprung up on 4 acres in a rural nook of the island.
Nantucket Vineyard, Cisco Brewery and Triple Eight Distillery are clustered around a brick plaza at the end of a curving gravel driveway. Though state liquor laws require them to be run as separate businesses, partners Dean Long, Randy Hudson and Harman oversee one of the few operations in the world that produces beer, wine and spirits at a single location.
"The trademark of this place is adventure," Hudson says. "We're willing to try anything, as long as it fits our style. Everything we do is sort of artisanal -- hand done. This place lends itself to that."
Whiskey futures
That willingness to experiment is evident in the way the whiskey is being sold. Friends, business associates and others have lined up to buy futures in Notch. In 2000, when Triple Eight got its distilling license and started making hard liquor, a 53-gallon barrel (about 200 750-milliliter bottles) sold for $3,000. The price has since risen to $5,000, and will continue to rise until 2005, when the first batch will be ready to drink.
Barrel owners attended an investors-only dinner earlier this month, when many got their first taste. At 120-proof, it's still a raw product, but initial reviews were favorable, Long says, and the whiskey will continue to mellow with age.
"It's still rough. It's not smooth like a bottled whiskey," he says. "(But) it's really started to get way better all of a sudden."
It'll be another two years before anyone knows whether Notch is a success. In the meantime, Triple Eight, Cisco and Nantucket Vineyards are rolling along, thanks in part to an unwitting marketing army of thousands.
"People come to Nantucket from all over New England, all over the states, all over the world," Hudson says. "We don't have to go out to all those places and market it because those people are doing it for us."
While Notch ages, the still is churning out gin, rum and vodka to pay the bills. The latter has been particularly lucrative. "One in four bar drinks contains vodka," Harman points out.
Triple Eight Vodka sales have grown from 240 cases in 2001 to more than 3,000 this year, surpassing Cisco's beer sales. It's now available as far away as Tennessee and was recently picked as one of the world's most promising new vodkas by Robert Plotkin, a Tucson, Ariz.-based beverage critic.
"It's a fine product," he says. "And their rum is killer, it's just great stuff."
Beer and wine sales are also up, Harman says. These are high times for a business that's been a Nantucket institution for more than two decades.
Partners' history
After working as a farm laborer, Long, 48, founded the vineyard with his wife Melissa in 1981. Early attempts to grow grapes on the wind-swept island failed, so they began importing them from California, upstate New York and other wine regions.
A decade later, Randy and Wendy Hudson moved into the loft above the winery and started experimenting with homebrewing. Hudson was a baker by trade, but he soon found he had a talent for making beer.
"It's a natural evolution from making bread to making beer," he says.
Hudson applied for a commercial brewer's license in 1994, just in time to capitalize on the microbrew craze of the 1990s. The brewery was named for Cisco Beach, a half-mile down the road.
Harman, 29, was a student at Fairfield University, summering on Nantucket and working on a senior thesis on the microbrew revolution, when he met Hudson and Long in 1995. He talked his way into a job and has since become the operation's marketing whiz.
Brand manager Matt Lambo came on board in 2001 and can often be seen in the Boston area hawking vodka and mixing martinis in a blue 1975 VW bus decorated with Triple Eight's eight-ball logo.
The company got into the hard-liquor business at the right time, says Plotkin. In the three years since they got a distiller's license, "microdistilleries" have popped up across the country, replacing microbreweries as the hot industry trend.
Consultant
"The key to the whole whiskey thing is to hire the right guy," says Long. "Without George McClements, this would have all been a waste of time."
McClements, a distilling consultant from Islay, Scotland, first visited Nantucket in the spring of 2000, and it reminded him a lot of home.
The ocean breezes and pure water drawn from deep in the sandy soil mirror conditions on Scotland's western isles, where some of the world's finest single-malt whiskies are produced. The distillery's name -- Triple Eight -- comes from the well that provides its water: No. 888.
If Triple Eight can produce a high-quality single malt, it will succeed where numerous other U.S. distilleries have failed, Plotkin says.
"I hope they're not biting off too much," Plotkin says. "Good single malt is about more than just the water. It's about the entire climactic condition of a place, and that's something you just can't change. You've either got it or you don't."