Featured | Tamworth Distilling

Freshly picked: Tamworth Garden Flora Gin

The end of summer marks the last blooms for New England wildflowers. It was time to capture the essence of these late summer flavors in a floral forward gin.

While juniper berries help ground the top notes to an evergreen base note, the other botanicals take center stage. Usual gin supporters, such as coriander and angelica, are mingled with the lighter aromatics of geranium, lemon verbena and labdanum. All is balanced with a slight amount of raw honey.

The nose is bright and crisp, with an aroma of wildflower honey and hints of fresh grapefruit. On the palette, the roundness of juniper berries, coriander and angelica finish cleanly and familiar. Clover, elderflower and geranium spread to the olfactory, offering a departure from more common gins.

Starting with a smooth neutral grain spirit allows for easy sipping alone or with just an ice cube. The introduction of water or tonic releases more of the alcohol-bound essential oils of the flowers, making it a great gin to enjoy in all of the classics.

You can find Tamworth Garden Flora Gin at our distillery or at the following New York locations:

Prospect Wine Shop

Shawn Fine Wines & Spirit

Wine Stop

La Vid Wines & Spirits

A Tamworth Guide to Cocktails: BROOKYLN

They say if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere, and well – we made it! We spent the afternoon sipping our way through Brooklyn on a hunt for the best Tamworth cocktails the area has to offer.

From quaint lunch spots to cozy bar tops, these places all had one thing in common – delicious cocktails. Follow us on our Tamworth tour of Brooklyn:

The Street Shark at Montana’s Trail House (455 Troutman St, Brooklyn, NY 11237)

Von Humboldt’s Tamarind Cordial, Owney’s Rum, house winter spice syrup, Brooklyn Hemispherical Rhubarb bitters and lime juice. Garnished with a mini Swedish Fish – $12

Chicory Root at HiHello – 247 Starr St, Brooklyn, NY 11237

Art in the Age Chicory Root any way you like it. Try a Chicory Americano with brown sugar or Chicory with Earl Grey Tea

Purple Roots at Walters Foods (253 Grand St, Brooklyn, NY 11211)

Chicory root, rum, beet and coffee syrup, whole egg, and chocolate bitters. Topped with ground nutmeg – $12

Barr Hill’s Final Word at Black Tree BK (261 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211)

Barrel aged Von Humboldt’s Tamarind and Barr Hill gin. Finished with another pour of Von Humboldt’s Tamarind Cordial and Amere Sauvage. Garnished with a cinnamon stick garnish – $13

Hootie Hoo at The JakeWalk (282 Smith St, Brooklyn, NY 11231)

Von Humboldt’s Tamarind cordial, El Dorado 12 yr Rum, Lemon Hart 151, house made ginger syrup, lime, & Jamaican jerk bitters. Garnished with candied Tamarind – $12

Can’t get to these bars? Order online at:

Astor Wine | Winnfield Flynn | Waverly Liquors | Golden Rule

On The Rise: Distiller’s Bread

There’s a deep satisfaction in knowing that you’re part of a very long tradition and at Sunnyfield Brick Oven Bakery, they’re making bread the way it’s been done since the beginning.

You’ll find Sunnyfield Brick Oven Bakery tucked along Chinook Trail, just 10 minutes away from Tamworth Distilling. Before entering the bakery you’ll notice neatly stacked cords of fire wood, sustainably harvested from the Ossipee Mountain Land Company, which quite literally fuels their entire operation. Inside you’ll be greeted by Peg and Allie, the masterminds behind it all. The bakery is quaint, warm, and above all simplistic. Aside from the organized surplus of organic grains and ingredients, there’s a giant brick oven, and their most trusted tools – their hands.

They hand mix their bread in small batches, starting early in the morning. After that, the dough is turned, folding over on itself again and again. The dough rises for two or three hours before being weighed and shaped, then it’s set aside to rise in the appropriate vessels. Soon the loaves are loaded into the oven, where they bake for 30 minutes to an hour.

Peg and Allie refer to baking as “both a science and an art.”, but at Sunnyfield Brick Oven Bakery you’ll witness a little bit of both. Their approach relies on technicality and instinct. Temperature, hydration, and protein levels are heavily considered, but when it comes down to it they’re also able to provide the bread with whatever else it needs at each stage. With all that said, they’re not purists. They’re always developing new recipes, perfecting classics, and even making use of our spent distiller’s grains.

After our organic corn mash works it’s magic on our whiskey, it’s sent through a centrifugal separator that efficiently separates grains from liquids. Our spent grains are often used as warm cow feed and compost at local farms. Other times, when those farms are stocked, our grains are sent to local bakers who work to recycle the nutrient rich spent grains.

Upon delivery at Sunnyfield, the spent whiskey grains are combined with their organic flours, cornmeal, blackstrap molasses, yeast, sea salt, and malted barley. The result is a deliciously unique bread, wholesome in both origin and flavor.

Loaves are delivered fresh to the distillery each week and are available for purchase in our retail space. Stay updated on Sunnyfield Brick Oven Bakery’s latest creations by following them on their Facebook page or visting their website.

An Autumnal Walk Through Tamworth

“Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here in Tamworth, we like to think of our spirits in terms of stories. We draw our inspiration from actual places, and every bottle we create tells a specific story. Every glass is a journey you can take.

Here’s one of our favorite journeys.

From the panoramic vistas of Great Hill Fire Tower to the calming edges of Chocorua Lake, we invite you to take a walk with us through our favorite spots in Tamworth, wearing the shades of Autumn,

As with everything we create, we’ve cleared a path, but it’s up to you to take it.

A Sweet Preview

Just a few months ago we sealed our 11th batch of apple brandy and set it to rest in the barrel house. As years go by this crisp, clear spirit will take on the characteristics of it’s oak cask and transform into a warm well-rounded aged brandy. Luckily, with a growing appreciation of unaged spirits and a hint of impatience, we set aside a barrel of apple brandy to enjoy now. Our Tamworth Garden Eau De Vie is a sweet preview of what is yet to come from our barrel house. Distilled and fermented purely from local apple pomace, this Eau De Vie is truly a fresh picked taste of Autumn in New England.

Tamworth Garden Eau De Vie will do well to hold you over until our other aging batches transform into rich, complex brandies. This unique spirit is both crisp and warm, and lends a slight bite and sweetness to simple cocktails. We suggest treating it as you would any brandy or using it to build a Sweet Harvest cocktail by muddling seasonal fruits, sugar, citrus, and fragrant herbs.

We decided to celebrate our favorite fleeting autumnal fruit and mashed up a few ripe figs, but encourage you to experiment with whatever fruits you’d like.

Sweet Harvest

2 oz Eau De Vie

1/2 oz lemon juice

1/2 oz thyme simple syrup

1 fig, quartered

Muddle quartered fig & thyme simple syrup in a cocktail shaker. Fill shaker with ice. Pour in Eau De Vie and lemon juice. Shake vigorously and double strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a fresh sprig of thyme and a fig slice.

Von Humboldt’s Natur Wasser

Announcing Von Humboldt’s Natur Wasser, a spirituous accompaniment to Andrea Wulf’s newest book, The Invention of Nature.

Von Humboldt’s Natur Wasser is a limited edition, 40-proof Tamarind Cordial created right here at Tamworth Distilling and Mercantile. Only 500 bottles were produced, and will be available at talks and dinners with Wulf as well as for purchase in our distillery.

Despite being the most famous scientist of his age, Humboldt has faded into obscurity. His radical vision of nature as a complex and interconnected global force — ‘the web of life’ — totally changed our understanding of our relationship with the natural world. So thorough was this paradigm shift that we take it for granted, rather than crediting Humboldt for his “invention”. His travels and writings inspired many environmentalist thinkers and poets that came after, including Darwin, Wordsworth, Goethe, John Muir, and Henry David Thoreau.

A particular anecdote from Humboldt’s South American adventures led to the choice of the unique tamarind flavor. At the end of March of 1800, the explorer and naturalist packed his boat to the brim with tamarind fruit before departing on an expedition through the Venezuelan jungle. Humboldt had learned from the locals that the pod-like fruit of the tamarind could turn unsavory water into a refreshing ‘lemonade’.

We took this story to our distillers, where a quest began that was almost as ambitious as Humboldt’s. An exceptional batch of tamarind fruit was sourced from Thailand, which had sweet smoke and bourbon flavors resulting from the drying process. The flesh of the fruit was infused in our house-made neutral grain spirit, along with lemon zest and golden brown sugar. Finally, like the original ‘jungle river lemonade,’ the spirit was proofed down with sterilized water from the Swift River, which runs just a few feet from the distillery.

Learn more about Andrea Wulf here. Pre-order The Invention of Nature here.

This fall, Andrea Wulf will be taking both the story and the spirit on the road for a series of talks and dinners:

September 16 – (Mount Vernon, VA) Talk and book signing at George Washington’s Mount Vernon — Click here to learn more

September 17 – (Philadelphia, PA) Talk and book signing at The American Philosophical Society

September 18 – (Philadelphia, PA) Dinner at Talula’s Daily Secret Supper Club from 6:00-8:00pm — To reserve your seat & a signed copy of The Invention of Nature call 215.592.6555

September 30 – (New York, NY) Talk and book signing, followed by dinner at the New York Academy of Medicine at 8:30pm — Click here to reserve your seat & a signed copy of The Invention of Nature

October 5 – (Boston, MA) Talk and book signing at the Massachusetts Historical Society — Click here to learn more

October 14 – (Washington, DC) Dinner at The Tabard Inn at 7:00pm — Click here to reserve your seat & a signed copy of The Invention of Nature

Both talks and dinners will include a cocktail hour, and a chance to taste both Von Humboldt’s Natur Wasser as well as select Art in the Age spirits.

Apiary Gin Limited Release

The first batches of our spirits were released this summer and the response has been overwhelmingly positive, so we’ve decided to bottle a special run of our most popular spirit – our smooth and honeyed Apiary Gin.

A very limited amount of bottles are now available for pre-order, reserved for you to pick up at our distillery once they’re packaged and ready to go in late September.

Summer doesn’t last forever, which is why we’re bottling one more taste of it just for you.

Reserve your bottle today.

Tamworth Garden Gin Forage

Here in Tamworth, the stories we tell are the spirits we create. Flowers tell the story of seasons, so we’re telling the story of our local flora in the form of the most floral spirit possible: gin.

The conception of Tamworth Garden spirits began on the hillsides of New Hampshire. Inspired by local flora, we’ve foraged the ingredients to create fresh infusions in our botanical kitchen, as a base for our unique spirits.

While our Apiary Gin celebrates the sweet bounty of honeybees, our next gin will sings the song of flowers themselves. It’s an unfolding bouquet, adorned with local geranium, honey, violet, Lemon Verbena, Elderflower and Red Clover.

We’ve picked the bouquet, all you have to do is pour it in a glass.

Distilling Apiary Gin

“The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunshine.” – Thoreau

The story of Tamworth began with the story of hard work in a hard land, the relationship between the people and the soil. Our Apiary Gin celebrates the efforts of the most industrious workers around us: our local bees. Distilled with juniper berries, hand-foraged Poplar buds, Red Clover flower, and of course, 100% New England raw honey, Apiary Gin’s forest pine flavors are mellowed by the delicious fruits of our little buzzing friends labor. Another reason why we work with the land, not against it.

Visit our distillery for a tasting or stir up an Apiary Lemonade to enjoy at home.

2 parts Apiary Gin

4 parts fresh lemonade

Pour gin and lemonade over ice, stir, and garnish with fresh lemon & rosemary sprig.

Art in the Age Garden Infusions

Unlike wines, spirits don’t change in the bottle. They are time capsules, perfect pictures of the time and place they were created.

For our first line of spirits from our new Art in the Age Test Kitchen, we looked to the New England landscape around us to find our inspirations, and the seasonal ingredients of the autumn of 2014 were what informed our creations. Autumn in New Hampshire is a time of both subtle contemplation and intense inspiration. These Garden Infusions reflect that time in every bottle and in every glass.

Sweet potatoes infused with clove, maple syrup, and a touch of salt make this first batch the quintessence of autumn in a glass. Enjoy it after a hearty dinner, or before a long hike in the woods.

Once used as a coffee substitute, roasted chicory is the rich, dark basis of this earthy spirit. From there we tease out some bite with hand-harvested dandelion, spice with American rye, and warmth with cinnamon and maple syrup. At once both dark and inviting, our Chicory Vodka is a mystery you can solve.

Our beet vodka is a tribute to the fruits of the fall. We’ve blended sweet beets, tart New Hampshire cranberries, and cidery apple pomace, and added honey, salt, and tarragon to tie it all together. In the glass it is a striking punch which glows with a beautiful magenta color when held to the light. A perfect way to enjoy final fruits of the season today, tomorrow, and forever.