All Points West Distillery in Newark’s Ironbound neighborhood
We want new and fresh local spirits, beers, and others. Thankfully, we can get fine small batch spirits by All Points West Distillery of Newark. One does not usually think of Newark as a place to make spirits, but Newark, NJ had 26 operational breweries with its 35,000 acres of protected watershed in the Appalachian foothills by 1920. Today, none of these breweries remain.
We had the golden opportunity to try some of fine spirits by All Points West Distillery at Cocktails Under the Stars on a Jersey City rooftop on August 1, 2019. Many of us were able to talk to some of the staff who were proud of their fine spirits.
All Points West Distillery in Newark’s Ironbound neighborhood brings back alcohol beverage production to Newark with three main cereal grain spirits, gin, vodka, and whiskey.
Gil Spaier, the founder, uses corn whiskey in a pot still, resurrecting a method that had gone largely ignored for quite some time. Spaier opened his distillery for production in September 2017 with a grand opening shortly after in December 2017. The former architect-turned-distiller heads the tour, providing excellent and personal details into his brewing process on the weekends.
Spaier was making bread, especially using the industrial lofts in Newark that used to be beer places. His wife bought him a grain mill, and he stopped making bread. He then used the grain mill make beer in a variety of styles.
He felt making beer is more complicated than bread. But after a few months of making beer, he started to get the hang of it and he started to really enjoy it. This gave him the spark where he started to think about a spirit like whiskey that he enjoyed more than beer. Spaier realized that whiskey had never been made here. Whiskey can be simply defined as distilled beer.
We really enjoyed their Bone Black Pepper Vodka that was extra smooth filtered through bone char in small batches.
Bone Black Vodka is now available in the original Overproof strength (104 proof, as Regular Proof is 80 proof), and brand new: Bone Black Pepper.
If one likes gin then many would like their naturally macerated botanical gin made with 13 botanicals, distilled in a way to bring out the earthy notes. The unusual botanicals makes it softer, richer and broader in flavor.
Newark’s All Points West Distillery made a splash at the 2019 USA Spirits Ratings competition, held in San Francisco on July 21, 2019 when their All Points West Malt and Grain Pot Still Whiskey was awarded the titles “Whisky of the Year” and “Best Spirit of the Year by Packaging” in addition to winning a Gold medal.
The USA Spirits Ratings competition is a major international competition that judges over 500 worldwide entrants. All the judging panels included spirits industry professionals with commercial buying expertise. The judges included professionals from leading retail chains, wholesalers, distributors, specialty retailers, and casual and fine dining establishments.
In the whiskey category, All Points West Malt and Grain Pot Still Whiskey competed against American, Scottish and Irish Whiskeys including 12-, 18- and even a 25-year-old entrant. Additionally, a blind taste test conducted by the Manchester England Whiskey Club voted All Points West number one.
CATHOUSE Gin was awarded a Silver Medal (89 points, one point shy of gold) by the Beverage Tasting Institute in 2018. They use a traditional ratio of Juniper to Coriander to their 11 third-order botanicals, including Elderberry and Rose Hip, Cathouse Gin intensifies the richness of the botanicals through a long maceration followed by a distillation deep
They have a new release, Cathouse Pink Pepper Gin, featuring Pink Pepper and Hibiscus that is very unusual to other gins. We tried a smoked gin from Empire Spirits Projects which this Cathouse Pink Pepper Gin is quite similar.
More about the company and their fine spirits can be found at: allpointswestdistillery.com.
