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Whiskey, by George
by
Joshua Covington
For Virginia Business
Novemeber 2003
George
Washington has been called many things over the centuries
— general, patriot, president — but party
animal? Now, with the ongoing reconstruction of Washington’s
distillery at Mount Vernon, archeologists have the evidence.
The
project, now in its fifth year and funded by a $1.5
million grant from the Distilled Spirits Council of
the U.S., seems to be coming along. A massive team of
archeologists, interns and volunteers has uncovered
most of the key structural information from Washington’s
distillery. So far, the team has already pieced together
one copper still that was used to contain the alcohol
during the distillation process.
The
goal of the project is to reconstruct the 75- by 30-foot
distillery — at one time the second largest in
the mid-Atlantic with 11,000 gallons of whiskey produced
per year — to educate visitors. Mount Vernon executives
hope to begin actual reconstruction of the distillery
in 2005 with the design based on archeological findings.
The majority of digging, plotting and charting should
be done before this winter.
How
much has the distillation process changed since Washington’s
day? While the basic process of heating fermented wine
or beer to a temperature between the boiling points
of alcohol and water remains the same, the whiskey makers
would have had to work without the convenience of electricity.
Pumping water to and from the distillery, removing waste
and maintaining the temperature in the still to that
critical temperature would have been the toughest obstacles
to overcome.
But
with some luck and plenty of dirt under their fingernails,
the archeologists at Mount Vernon will continue to piece
together more of Virginia’s rich history and learn
how Washington was able to solve these problems. So
pour them a drink; they deserve it.
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