June 22nd, 2016 Learn Colonial Dance - Free Event - Last one of the year

On June 22nd, 2016 we are holding our last class of this year for learning Colonial Dance.  This class is taught by a Colonial Williamsburg professional instructor.  After this, you can learn Colonial Dance at Colonial Williamsburg for a fee.  But here you get to learn it for free at the Distillery.  This is our third and final class this year and we will not do this again until next year and that depends on availability of our instructor.  This class is a lot of fun and did I mention it was free?  If you have not had a chance to try either our Gin or our Gold Medal award winning Rum, then make sure you come to this event and you can sample either or both the Gin and the Rum for free at this class.

  We will be posting a video or two of our last class very soon so you can see what you have been missing.  This is also a great time to meet the owner, Dr D.  Pictured back right with the flags behind him.

We will do our best to try and get one of these great big smiles for you from Dr D when you come in too.  If not, maybe we can get him to tell you a bad joke.  That usually gets him smiling.

  So put this date on your calendar and plan on coming out to learn Colonial Dance.  (Did I mention it was free too)?  

Yorktown Rum Takes Gold Medal In Los Angeles, California Competition - 91 Points

Our Yorktown Rum has just finished with a Gold Medal winning in an International competition.  The rum came up 91 points in the Los Angeles, California International Spirits competition for 2016 beating out some very big names and we once again beat out Bacardi where they had multiple entries.

  What is even more impressive is we beat out most entries where the rum was aged.  There were only 3 rums that were above us in this competition.  Congratulations to Dictador 20 Year Old Solera System Rum that came in with a very impressive 96 points, Dos Maderas 5+3 Rum that came in with 93 points and Blue Water Ultra that came in with 92 points.  We share 91 points with Cruzan Single Barrel Rum, Cruzan Aged Dark Rum, Kirk and Sweeney Rum. Pelican Harbor Light Rum.

  What we are able to show by all of this is that aging is not a serious factor in the quality of any rum nor is spicing one's rum.  We beat out many of those by using quality ingredients.  Check out the results here at this link below.

http://www.laspiritscomp.com/wos/spirits_competition/documents/Gold%20Medal%20Awards.pdf

Adding flavors to rum did not help anyone in the competition.  Dark rum was not better than a white rum.  Dictador 20 Year Old Solera System Rum is very expensive to produce.  Who wants to age a rum for 20 years?  Sure, it got the company 96 points which is fantastic and they were named best of the best, but at what cost?  (I have to admit, I would be more than happy to try a bottle).  So as you will notice, Cruzan, who we share 91 points with, both of their entries were aged rums.  Again, at what cost?  We did not age our rum at all.  We did not color it nor did we add any additional flavors.  We just used quality ingredients and ran the still the way it's supposed to be run using an historical recipe.

  But that is what we are about.  Bringing to you historical interpretations of what the first rum would have tasted like and ensuring we give you the highest quality product we can produce.  Now it shows.  We are working on some plans to still improve our rum.  We want to take that 96 points next time and we will do it without aging.  We set out sights to the Gold and we easily made it.  Now we are setting our sights on best of the best.  You can rest assured we will make that too.  And best of all, it's all made right here in the Good old USA. Hey, better yet, It's Virginia made in the heart of America's most historical birth place.  Thank you for your support.

Flights Are Coming

Flights are coming, flights are coming.  What are flights?  Now that is a good question.  Flights are a tray or some form of cup or glass holder where one has drinks lined up on them so that they can sample various forms of a type of spirit.  In other words, a tray with 4 drinks on them.

  Now Virginia ABC allows us to serve up to and only 2 shots per day per person.  No more period.  This is beyond our control and we will stick to that limit.  So does that mean that flights will only be 2 drinks?  No.   Our flights are going to consist of 4 drinks but the maximum alcohol level between all 4 drinks will be 2 shots.  So each drink will be a half of one shot.  Once you buy one flight, that is it.  We can not sell you another flight until the next day.  It's not that we do not want to, it's that we are not allowed to and we want you to be safe and come back.

  So we are lining up a nice series of old recipe drinks made with our Rum or Gin.  If you prefer, you can mix two gin drinks with two rum drinks.  As much as we would love to have bourbon ready, it just won't happen yet.  So when does this all begin?  In just a few short weeks from this post date.  Just so there are no disappointments the drink sizes are only half size due to the limit on the amount of alcohol we can put in each glass which again is only a half of a shot.

  We will post pictures of our drinks soon.

Chocolate Rum Balls Easy Recipe

Now here is a fast easy recipe for making chocolate rum balls.  Recommended in the video is using dark rum, that isn't at all required.  We recommend using our white rum.  It's smooth and does not give any negative after tastes to the recipe which some dark rums will cause.  If you want to make them extra strong without being over bearing?  Add some rum to the chocolate topping as well.  

Welcome to our new blog

Hello everyone and welcome to our new blog site for the Williamsburg Distillery.  Here we will post news, updates and recipes for everyone.  On this site we can expand and offer more information to you than we can either on our main website at http://www.williamsburg-distillery.com  or on our Facebook page.

  We can share entire recipes here and bring you full news that just does not work on other platforms.  Plus we have been having some issues getting areas corrected on our main site, please bare with us on that.  One thing I would like to take a moment to correct is the fact that our main site states we produce Vodka.  We looked at that before we ever got our license, but decided against it.  Our main products are Rum, Gin and Bourbon.  Right now we are producing an historic triangle series.  Our Rum is Yorktown Rum, our Gin is Jamestown Gin and our Bourbon is Williamsburg Bourbon.

  Now we have already produced Bourbon, but it is not yet available in our store or in the ABC stores yet.  It was barreled in February of this year, (2016), so it is going to take some time to properly age.  How long?  Well to put it this way, not soon enough and the expectations are about 3 years minimum.  It could be ready sooner, but we are not really expecting to see it sooner.

  Leave us some feedback and like us on Facebook.  We are now up on Twitter and Instagram as well as Pinterest and Flickr.  If you have some other favorites you would like to see us on, please let us know.  We look forward to seeing you at our shop.