This Beekeeper is Pollinating Whiskey.
Claire Marin is turning her bees into you buzz
I love a nice cocktail, and my cocktail of choice on cold winter days tends to be a mix of brown spirit and something sweet and something tart: a Paper Plane (aperol, bourbon, amaro, and lemon juice), a Whiskey Sour (bourbon, lemon juice, simple syrup, egg white flip), or a Lion’s Tail (whiskey, allspice dram, bitters, simple syrup and lime). So when I learned about the honey spirits movement, where distillers were aging whiskey in honey barrels, I was intrigued.
What I learned is that I love spirits aged in honey barrels and that many of the folks at the forefront of this honey-soaked spirit movement are women, who are leading companies like Siponey, Tenth Ward Distilling Co. and Beeble Buzz.
But the OG of the honey-spirits movement is Claire Marin, who has recently rebranded her long-time spirits business, Catskill Provisions, as Pollinator Spirits.
Claire started as a beekeeper and grew Catskill Provisions into a successful commercial honey business. About eight years ago, she began infusing her honey into sourced rye whiskey (made with all New York State grains) and New York Honey Rye was born. To make the rye, her honey is added to empty barrels for four weeks, then the honey is poured out and replaced with rye whiskey for another four weeks. Then it’s good to go.
Claire is now distilling rye, bourbon, gin and vodka in her distillery in the Western Catskills. Like all good craft producers, she's tweaked the process: her rye is now finished in ex-honey barrels and her bourbon is finished in ex-maple syrup barrels. Her gins and vodka use honey in the fermentation process.
She's just released a new Crimson Amaro, colored with cochineal. If you’re an amaro person, I think you’ll love this. It’s highly aromatic and undeniably red from the cochineal.
Inspired by traditional Italian Amari, it’s created with a base of Pollinator Vodka infused with a proprietary blend of more than 15 botanicals, among them juniper, wormwood, sage, angelica, gentian, and orris root, and then made luscious with Claire’s own raw honey.
Claire’s Pollinator Spirits are priced reasonably ($50 and under) and I think you’ll love playing with them in your holiday cocktails, plus they look marvelous sitting on a bar cart, and make such a lovely hostess gift.