Leisure

Drinking Local

Local Booze and Where to Get It

Local pride now involves two entirely new elements: winning baseball, sure. But also the spirits in your cocktail, thanks to a whole new slate of liquors born and bred in the area. We’re still working on winning football and basketball.

GOING GREEN

DC’s Only Gin Is Now on Sale

You prefer your spirits with a whiff of scandal. Well, here comes Green Hat, DC’s first legal gin in more than a century, and it’s named after the bootlegger who supplied most of Congress during Prohibition.
How you’ll want it: Go totally native and make a Rickey with it. Then get a DC-flag tattoo.

BUSTIN’ LOOSE

A DC Bourbon... via Kentucky

Okay, so this new local bourbon isn’t exactly distilled here. Like Mitch McConnell, it starts in Kentucky, then travels here, where it’s aged in American and French oak, then blended by a local whiskey expert.
How you’ll want it: In a mint julep, another Kentucky-to-DC import.

DOUBLING UP

Whiskey Meets... White Whiskey

Your whiskey could always use... more whiskey. The sommelier at J&G Steakhouse agrees, as he blended Catoctin Creek’s Roundstone Rye with their Mosby’s Spirit white whiskey, aged it and bottled it as the private-label 515 whiskey.
How you’ll want it: In a cocktail like their Passion Chili Whiskey Fizz, while huddled around one of J&G’s outdoor fire pits.

BRAND-Y NEW

It’s Like Cognac on the Potomac

We know you haven’t had brandy made from Virginia grapes. Because it hasn’t existed. Enter the aforementioned Catoctin Creek, where they distilled Loudoun County grapes and aged the spirit two years in bordeaux casks.
How you’ll want it: For a special occasion, because only 300 or so bottles are being released. So make it a case.