Maryland’s Tobacco Barn Distillery’s 700 MPH Bourbon Brings Whiskey-Making Back To Its U.S. Roots

Yes, you read that right: 700 mile-per-hour bourbon. It’s whiskey that was flown last August in barrels placed inside two external fuel tanks on a British Sea Harrier jet, a fighter that was formerly part of the Royal Navy. “Kelvin Barrels donated the 700 mph barrels,” said Scott Sanders, Bourbon Relationships Director at Tobacco Barn Distillery in Hollywood, Maryland. “The bourbon was exposed to 140 decibels, three feet away from the Rolls Royce Pegasus jet engines. We’ll see how that pressure affects the flavor creation in the barrels.”

That’s one of several unique beverage alcohol offerings the guys at Tobacco Barn Distillery have been working on in their efforts to re-establish one of the oldest whiskey-making areas in the United States. And while they have a healthy respect for the modern-day epicenter of bourbon production, they want to help people learn about what came before that.

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“Thank God for Kentucky,” Sanders said. “They put bourbon on the map, and made it into an international presence. But they think the world started in 1792. People in Maryland were making whiskey long before that.”

He’s right. Scotch-Irish immigrants established a rye-making tradition in the area when they first arrived in what was then a British colony in the late 1600s. Maryland rye helped fill the need left when the British stopped sending rum to America during the Revolution, and it remained popular right up until Prohibition.

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Now Sanders and his partners Dan Dawson and Sean Coogan are working to help re-establish that age-old tradition of spirits production. They bring a variety of experiences to the endeavor. Dawson, for example, acquired the third license for fuel ethanol back in the late 1970s, and used to design telemetry for space vehicles, while Sanders is a retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral who commanded an international anti-piracy task force off the coast of Somalia.

They’re new to craft distilling, though, and Tobacco Barn, founded in 2014, is still just getting started. “We released 760 cases last year,” Sanders said. “We’re looking to double that this year, and double it again next year. We have a 5,000-proof gallon capacity and we currently have 500 barrels aging. We started in smaller format barrels, 5 gallons, then 30-gallon barrels. We’ve been in 53-gallon barrels [which are standard full-size barrels] for the last five years.”

Tobacco Barn is one of the rare “single farm” distilleries that grows the corn it uses for its whiskeys right on the premises. And in addition to their 700 mph Bourbon, which should be released by Memorial Day, the team has had some other interesting experiments. In 2015 they partnered with the U.S.S. Zumwalt Commissioning Committee to help pay tribute to Admiral Elmo Russell “Bud” Zumwalt, for whom the entire new class of guided missile destroyers was being named, along with the first of its class. Tobacco Barn created a special rum aged in bourbon barrels, Big Z Rum, that was launched in 2016. Proceeds from the 2,000 bottles helped support the launching of the ship that October.

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Also in 2016, the team began making USS Constellation Rum. Over 200 gallons of rum was made from 100% Maryland ingredients. It was double-distilled and stored in four bourbon barrels. In early 2017, it was loaded onto the sloop-of-war the U.S.S. Constellation, the last U.S. Navy sail-only warship, which was built in 1854 and is now a museum ship in Baltimore. “We aged the rum on board the Constellation, and used the proceeds to donate back to support the historic ships in Baltimore,” Sanders explained.

Today, in addition to steadily growing the business, the Tobacco Barn team is focused on the science of bourbon, in partnership with the chemistry department of St. Mary’s College of Maryland. “We have them looking at ester formation in zero- to five-year-old bourbon,” said Sanders. “It all has the same mash bill, distilling process, barrel type, distilling month, and aging location. Preliminary results will be out in the next few months.”

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They’re also continuing their work to educate bourbon enthusiasts about bourbon itself and Maryland’s rich distilling history. “There are a lot of different contours and flavor profiles in bourbon,” Sanders said. “There are over 300 different flavors from one single piece of American white oak [which bourbon barrels are always made of]. Then there are all the different mash bills, aging times, and aging environments. We have a different terroir in Maryland. And we don’t chill-filter–flavor comes from the protein left. It’s a lot of fun tasting different kinds of bourbons.”

And finally, they’re reaching beyond the core bourbon market. “We provide our local maple syrup folks with bourbon barrels,” said Sanders. “We have a coffee collaboration going, and a USDA recipe for bourbon bacon.”