White Dog Has Its Day

I first tasted white dog at the Labrot & Graham distillery, where Woodford Reserve is made. I remember everyone else around getting very excited about tasting this just-off-the-still clear joy juice, and my thinking it was moonshine and was going to blow the roof off my head. I was surprised when I tasted a delicate, fruity, multi-faceted liquor that I almost preferred to the aged Woodford.

Soon after that visit, I began to see commercially released white whiskeys on the market, first, and most commonly, Death's Door from Wisconsin. That Buffalo Trace recently got into the game is a sure sign that white dog has hit the big time, and that this spirit is never again going to be a secret caviar savored only by liquor geeks who either make their own or sip it on the sly during distillery visits.

I just wrote an article on the phenomenon for the New York Times:

Moonshine Finds New Craftsmen and Enthusiasts

By Robert Simonson

IN early April, Kris Comstock, a representative for the Buffalo Trace distillery in Kentucky, conducted a seminar on bourbon at Char No. 4, a bar in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, that offers 150 kinds of American whiskey.

Among the bourbons he poured were Buffalo Trace, Eagle Rare and Blanton’s. But his students weren’t interested in those.

“The first thing that everyone wanted to taste was the white dog,” he said. “We make products that win amazing awards all around the world, and they want to taste the white dog.”

White dog, or white whiskey, is, basically, moonshine. It’s newborn whiskey, crystal-clear grain distillate, as yet unkissed by the barrel, the vessel that lends whiskey some or all of its color and much of its flavor. And white dog is currently having its day.

“Aging in wood has many beautiful effects on a spirit,” said Tad Carducci, half of the cocktail consulting duo known as the Tippling Brothers. “But it does tend to disguise whatever the base spirit is. When you strip that away, you’re getting a real sense of what wheat offers, or rye or corn.”

Unlike vodka, in which the source grain is often purposefully purified to a vanishing point, white dogs are pungently fragrant, with a chewy sweetness to them.

This spring, Buffalo Trace began a limited commercial release of its white dog, which until now was available only as a much-coveted souvenir from the distillery’s gift shop. The bottles took their place on store shelves next to a growing line of colorless whiskeys.

Most are the work of young micro-distilleries like Death’s Door, in Wisconsin; Finger Lakes Distilling, in upstate New York; Tuthilltown, in the Hudson Valley; the Copper Fox Distillery, in northern Virginia; and House Spirits, in Portland, Ore.

There are so many white dogs on the market now that Joe Carroll, owner of Fette Sau, a bar and restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, offers a white-whiskey flight. Passengers on that flight, he said, include everyone from informed whiskey aficionados to inquisitive novices who think whiskey is born brown. “They’re curious because they don’t know anything about it,” he said.

According to Max Watman, the author of the recently published “Chasing the White Dog: An Amateur Outlaw’s Adventures in Moonshine” (Simon & Schuster), the trend is being fueled by two very differently motivated groups: practical-minded distillers and ravenously questing enthusiasts. “It’s obviously a boon to small distilleries,” Mr. Watman said. “If you’re making whiskey, you’ve got to keep the lights on and wait. It helps to be able to sell something right away. But that’s not the end of the story. I think anybody who’s ever toured a distillery and tasted this stuff coming right off the line is surprised at how delicious it is. Everybody says, ‘Wow, you should sell this!’ ”

The “you should sell this” moment for Death’s Door’s founder, Brian Ellison, came in early 2008 when he was preparing to age some red-winter-wheat-based distillate. A small Chicago distributor thought the raw liquor was so good he asked for 50 cases as is, and quickly found buyers.

“I always thought at some point people would get tired of it,” Mr. Ellison said. Instead, Death’s Door has sold more white whiskey in the first quarter of this year than it did in all of last year. Mr. Ellison is thinking of putting in some spring wheat to keep up with demand.

“The word ‘curiosity’ is very apropos,” Mr. Carducci said. “People who are spirit geeks are always looking for the next curiosity. But what happens is they become hooked and think it’s an actually respectable spirit.”

Gable Erenzo, a distiller at Tuthilltown, said that its Hudson New York Corn Whiskey — one of the earliest of the new white dogs to hit the market — has been steadily creeping up in sales, and he is not surprised. “We knew this was going to happen,” he said. “People, especially bartenders, were excited when they heard we were making a corn whiskey.”

Not just bartenders, either. Even though home distilling has long been illegal in America, interest in it is rising. The Web site homedistiller.org has 5,500 members, with handles like Kentucky Shiner, upinthehills and toofless.

One New York state moonshine hobbyist with more than 30 years’ experience behind various stills, who asked that his name not be used because of the legal issues, said the commercial distillers are “trying to replicate traditional methods, which is essentially what I do.”

He said he was not surprised by the advent of commercial white dogs. “I’ve been telling people for years that they have to taste corn whiskey, so that when they taste whiskey, they can find their way around the inside of their mouth.”

That said, he’s not overly impressed with what’s coming out. “The hobby distillers who are on the foodie bent are making better whiskey than you can buy. Period. No question about it. You just can’t do as good a job making 1,000 gallons at a time as you can making 10 gallons a time. There’s people making white dog that is mind-blowing.”

All this attention is focused on a kind of spirit that’s been around as long as there have been hills to hide stills. While moonshines of yore found a test of their mettle in whether they could keep the Xs on Pappy Yokum’s eyes, today’s legal lightnings are seen as finessed expressions of the spirit maker’s art.

“You’ve got less to hide behind,” Mr. Watman said. “You can mask a lot in a heavily charred barrel. You don’t get any pass with white whiskey. All you have is an expression of the distiller’s craft and the agriculture from which it came. It ups the stakes of the craft end of it.”

With that clarity in mind, the mixologists playing with this new toy are keeping things simple, building on standard cocktails that highlight the grain spirits’ natural flavors.

Mr. Carducci used Death’s Door as the base of his Albino Old-Fashioned at Bar Celona in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where he did some consulting work.

Damon Boelte, bar manager at Prime Meats in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, uses the same brand for the Good Word, his white-dog take on the classic Last Word.

Ehren Ashkenazi, beverage director at the Modern, uses it for Devil in White, a spin on the Manhattan, and Jim Meehan, of PDT, pairs Finger Lake Distilling’s Glen Thunder corn whiskey with sake and Galliano L’Autentico in his Brewer’s Breakfast.

Mr. Carroll, of Fette Sau, wonders whether the current fascination with this baby spirit will last.

“It will be interesting to see if the distilleries continue selling white dog when all their other whiskeys mature,” he said.

For Mr. Watman, however, as long as there are whiskey drinkers in the world, there will be a place for white dog. “Part of it is an enthusiasm for a spirit we already love,” he said. “If you love whiskey, you’re going to love raw whiskey, too. It’s another way to taste the same thing.”

Cocktail-Glass Aging, or, Turning White Dog Tan

I recently met a bootleg distiller from upstate New York. We'll call him Laird. He's been making his own booze for about 30 years, and his knowledge of the craft is vast. I happened to have in my possession a few of the new white dogs that are on the market. I was curious what he thought of them, being a maker of white lightening himself, so I let him sample a couple.

After noting the presence of a paraffin flavor in making of the craft distillers making white dog out there, and generally disparaging the kind of cheap, Dutch stills he was sure each maker was using, he led me through an interesting science experiment. A friend of Laird's and mine—at whose home we met—is an amateur winemaker. He had some French wood chips on hand. Laird suggested I put a few of these in a glass of the Buffalo Trace White Dog (which has an alcohol content of 62.5%) and watch what happened. I was astounded. The whiskey started to take on the wood immediately. Within a minute, it was darker and tasted markedly different. In five minutes, it began to taste vaguely like aged whiskey. I had no idea such things could occur so quickly. "It only works with French oak," said Laird. "The French stuff is great for that. With American oak, it's a slower process." (Here's a photo of the whiskey in question, below.)

And that was that. Until I visited that same friend this weekend. He had an idea—wouldn't it be kinda cool to do the wood-chip thing, but in the context of a cocktail? Light bulb! It would indeed.

My friend gave me a small stash of French wood chips. I went home and prepared myself a white dog Old Fashioned, using Death's Door white whiskey. (Death's Door seems to be the white dog that works best in most standard cocktails.) I muddled a sugar cube with some Angostura, then threw the wood cube in there and stirred it around some more. I added the whiskey, stirred; ice, stirred.

It definitely looked darker than the white dog Old Fashioneds I had made in the past. But that could have been my dose of Angostura. It did, however, taste different. The woodiness came through. It was an interesting accent, one that I liked. And I loved the idea that the taste of the drink would evolve as I sipped at it. I was beginning to think I had stumbled upon a bit of mixology genius.

I moved on to a white dog Manhattan. I figured I could used the wood cube for the cherry. I used Death's Door again, employing Neyah White's white Manhattan recipe, which uses Dolin Blanc vermouth and Benedictine. One thing I discovered as I strained the cocktail into the glass: wood floats. Of course, I knew that. But I had forgotten, since the ice in my Old Fashioned had kept the chip well at the bottom of the glass. But there was my woody oaken bobbing at the surface.

The drink tasted good. But it didn't taste different. What's more, that color of the drink didn't change over time either—though it was hard to tell, what with the color of the Benedictine muddying matters.

I drew some conclusions. One, a wood chip just thrown in at the end doesn't have as much effect on a drink as one stirred along as the cocktail is made. Two, a wood chip is going to have more of a noticeable flavor impact in a sipping drink like an Old Fashioned than it will in an up drink like a Manhattan, which is consumed more quickly.

I wondered if a higher alcohol white dog would make a difference. It does in infusions, after all, sucking out the flavor of whatever's in the alcohol more rapidly. I made a Manhattan with the Buffalo Trace, using just Dolin Blanc. No Benedictine. There did seem to be a slight different in color and taste from the Death's Door Manhattan. But not much.

I had another idea. Maybe the coldness of the liquor was inhibiting the wood chips from doing their aging jazz. I put a cube in some room temperature Buffalo's Trace white dog for 10 minutes. It did its work; the whiskey got darker and sharper. I made a Manhattan with that. Different from the previous one, no doubt, even if the difference was subtle.

More wood chips in the drink would work quicker magic, no question, but it would also be more unsightly. Who would want to drink a Manhattan with five chunks of kindling floating on top?

I still think I'm on to something. This could be the latest bar gimmick. So if anyone out there reading this decides to start adding wood chips to their cocktails, please give me a credit. Of course, there is the question as to whether this would pass muster with the Health Department. But it's not like bartenders actually concern themselves with the health codes that much anyway...