Raising a Glass
Photo by Judd Demaline.
Robert Berendzen holds up a long, copper instrument. “Do you know what this is? It’s a whiskey thief,” he says. The cylindrical tool is used for just what it implies: tasting whiskey straight out of the barrel.
He’s standing in the warm rickhouse at Woodsmen Distilling in Higbee, Missouri, which he built himself. It can hold up to 310 barrels, but he’s here to taste something that fills only three. After removing the bung, the barrel’s stopper, Berendzen siphons out a nip of his pet project while his dutiful blue heeler, Dottie, is laying at his feet.
“They said it couldn’t be done,” he says defiantly, taking a sip of the 130-proof corn whiskey. “130 proof in a white-oak barrel would take your breath away – it’d be strong. Harsh. Burn, burn, burn.” This whiskey, however does not: It’s aging in a barrel made of 100 percent pecan wood.
“[Pecan barrels are largely] unheard of, because only white oak has tyloses in [the wood], and tyloses is what keeps [barrels] from leaking,” Berendzen explains. “Well, I’m always that way; I’ve gotta prove somebody wrong. So they were right, partially – when I made the first barrels, they looked like a water fountain – [I tested them with water, and] water poured out. But I figured out the parts of the tree I could use, and I made pecan barrels.”
For Berendzen, it was worth the time to experiment with using pecan wood – a project that large cooperages typically don't take on.
Berendzen is focused on producing everything himself, from growing grains to making his own staves and barrels. In addition to Woodsmen, he runs Barrel 53 Cooperage, Midwest Stave Exchange and four farms, where, among other things, he raises grains for his spirits as well as cattle; the spent grain is even fed back to the cows.
Although Berendzen first came to mid-Missouri while working in construction, he later opened the stave exchange and eventually graduated to barrel-making. Today, his cooperage sells barrels all over the world, including in Spain, Scotland and Peru. After researching distilling for about 10 years and planting grain in 2015, he figured he had everything in place to open his own operation. Berendzen's ability to control the entire process – from raising grains to aging his spirits in his own barrels – is rare. He represents a new wave of farm distillers in America who are seeking more command over every facet of grain-to-glass spirit production.