HIGHLAND — A distillery just south of Parkesburg is giving Kentucky a real run for their money.
Spring House Spirits is producing whiskey, bourbon, and most recently, rum, on the 100-acre farm known as Chestnut. The milling, mashing, fermenting, distilling and aging all take place at the farm.
The micro or nano distillery produces 300 bottles per month.
Distiller Chris Demars will tell you that it’s the property’s many natural springs that make the liquor so good, without having to use additives. It’s no coincidence that the Parkesburg Victory Brewing Company uses the same water source.
Making whiskey and bourbon is in Demar’s DNA. Both grandmothers ran stills during Prohibition and when that ended, both went back to making alcohol legally.
By cutting down on the size of the barrels, the product needs one fourth as long to age. Spring House whiskey only requires six months, rather than the usual two years, to bottle.
True bourbon needs to be made from at least 51 percent corn and aged in new oak casks.
The Spring House whiskey is produced in an old milk house and is composed of 72 percent corn, which adds full bodied flavor, 12 percent wheat, 12 percent rye and 4 percent barley. The new Doc Windle Bourbon will be much higher in rye and lower in corn.
The farmhouse dates to 1814, with indigenous people occupying the place for 13,000 years. Many arrowheads have been found near the springs which attracted so many.
Arthur Parkes was the first mayor of Parkesburg. He bought the rolling farmland from the Penn Foundation.
The farm’s third owner was Filmore Martin. His wife was a teetotaler and Fillmore would jump on any old horse when the regular foxhunts crossed his property, while knowing that the hunt always carried flasks of whiskey.
Doc Windle owned the farm during the Civil War. He always carried a bottle of alcohol in his doctor’s bag for “medicinal purposes.”
Bobby Cochran, the namesake for Cochranville, founded and ran the Cochran Hunt that came through the farm.
“The history gives a sense of place physically with respect to time,” Demars said.
The property will be permanently preserved through the Brandywine Nature Conservancy.
“We see ourselves just as caretakers,” Demars said.
Demars is a retired nuclear engineer. He loves to cook and compared balancing the flavors in whiskey, so they complement each other, to mixing grains and wood to get those flavors.
The bourbon and whiskey are aged in oak casks.
“The oak gives the complexity to create those flavors and to balance and produce a full flavor whiskey that’s a pure pleasure to drink,” he said.
Son Alexander Demars serves as the head distiller and like his father also enjoys cooking. Chris said that Alexander has a fine sense of taste which is necessary for a distiller.
For more information, or to purchase a bottle, go to www.springhousespirits.com
