It’s hard to imagine on as rainy of a day as it is today here in DC – thanks to Tropical Storm Hanna – but just two weeks ago Marshall and I, on a beautiful sunny day, made the drive from Arlington, VA, down route 29, through Warrenton, and over to Sperryville, Virginia, to visit Rick Wasmund at Copper Fox Distillery.

Copper Fox Distillery, right now, only makes one product. That’s the Wasmund’s Rappahannock pot stilled, non chill-filtered single malt whisky. (Taken straight from a bottle!) They get all their barley from one farm and even have a small shrine to that farm in their distillery.

Rick spent an internship over in Scotland learning how they make whisky there. Coming back, he’s using many of the same methods, only tailored more for the Virginia landscape.

We were greeted at the door by Rick’s “Master of Malt” – his mom. We were quickly joined by Rick and off we went.

The biggest thing I noticed at first in the large, barn-like distillery was the smell. It smelled a lot like a microbrewery but not as pungent as they can often smell. Instead, it was almost sweeter smelling. As much as I love beer, the smell of a brewery can bother me a bit, but I found the smell at Copper Fox to be very pleasant.

As we walked around the distillery Rick told us about his methods and why he does the things he does. He’s very passionate about his whisky.

From the malt room we checked out where they malt the barley – using cherrywood and applewood (which always makes me thing of yummy smoked pork products). From there, we walked over to the fermentation and distillation area, where he showed us the “beer” that goes into making the whisky and we also got to see how he measures it.

We checked out the whole operation, including the secret aging room that we can’t show you. One really need thing came out of there, however.

One of the things is that aging with apple and cherry wood is something just not done much, if at all. It makes for a very distinctive whisky. And their method of aging means that every batch of the whisky gets better and better.

For instance, I bought a bottle of the batch 15 a while ago. I will admit that upon first trying it – and, well, subsequent tries – I wasn’t impressed with it at all. I tried it several times, tried making drinks with it, but I just couldn’t get into it.

Rick had a bottle of the batch 14 that he’d done some alternate aging on – using small barrels that you can even buy online. It’d aged additionally in the barrel for about 6 weeks and was an amazingly different whisky. He hopes that one day he might be able to sell a whisky aging “kit” for people who want to fine-tune their whisky experience.

He’s also experimenting with a rye and some other things. The rye that we tasted was really good and I cannot wait to get my hands on a bottle of it!

As the day went on, he poured us a measure of the batch 21, the latest batch to be bottled. Each bottle is hand-spun into wax to seal it and hand-numbered for batch by Rick. As we tasted it, it had a distinct taste from the extra-aged and regular-aged batch 14 we’d tried plus from some of the different other experimentals we tried.

After a bit of a snack, we took our glasses outside to check out the beautiful bubbling creek behind the distillery. A perfect day, some good whisky, and a bit of conversation made for a fun afternoon before Marshall and I had to bundle back into the car for the 90 minute drive home.

There are a lot of new distiller out there these days. Some are motivated strictly by profit. Rick Wasmund is not one of those distillers – it is clear that he has a true passion for whiskey, and that he absolutely adores the product he’s making. It seems to me that each batch just gets better and better, and so, I’m excited to see what he keeps turning out. And I’m looking for a small barrel to put this batch 15 into…

All picture credits go to Marshall – he takes darn good photos out in the field!