millstreambrewing.com

Last week I went to visit Iowa’s first microdistillery. The Cedar Ridge Winery and Distillery is located inside Benz Beverage Depot in Cedar Rapids.  Jeff Quint is the head ‘vintner and distiller’, and was very nice and gave me a full tour. Jeff is using the still to make Vodka, using fermented apple cider as a base. This gives his vodka a noted ‘fruity’ character. Even fruitier is his Grappa, which is made from the fermented juice after pressing grapes. His Grappa has received from great reviews around Iowa, and I have to say, I found it very intriguing. A friend of mine who visited Italy, says it is better than any Grappa than he had over there. He is also working on a port (fortified wine) and an Apple Brandy. He said he has no plans to produce Gin, since the spices would stain the system and affect the flavor of his vodka. I got try everything, and by the time we were done I had left a considerable amount of dirty glassware…. every tasting required a new glass, and I didn’t want to ‘chug’ this stuff, as I knew it would get me pretty drunk! Here are some pictures of his state of the art still and the barrels he ages his liquors in:

Now a word on how he is able to do this on under the Iowa Liquor Control system. First of all, Jeff says he got a special bill passed a few years ago to allow this in all of the pro-native wine Legislation. Good job!

Now for the details of this arcane system as he explained it to me. He is not legally attached to Benz Beverage depot, the distillery is a separate business, and there is even a door to provide complete separation. When ever he makes a batch of alcoholic liquor, he has to convince the state to ‘buy it’ from him. If the state is not interested, he has no way at all of selling it within Iowa. He then has to pay to have it shipped to the liquor warehouse in Ankeny. The state then holds on it and charges a ’storage fee’ until the liquor is sold to a class E licensee in Iowa. The state delivers the liquor and gets cash on delivery, but does not actually pay Cedar Ridge until 30 days later, and it only pays what was sold.. until something is sold, Jeff is out the costs of his raw materials as it ’stored’ in Ankeny.   Note that all this means that every bottle of Liquor sold at Benz from Cedar Ridge first has to travel all the way to Ankeny (near Des Moines), and then all the way back to Cedar Rapids. Then when it is sold, the money goes back to the state, and then back to the Distillery some time later.

All this makes the making of beer seem so simple!

I wish Jeff Quint and the Cedar Ridge Winery and Distillery good luck in the future.  Oh, and they also make some fascinating local wines, but i’ll have to save that for a future article.