Greg Meeh has an unusual career creating stage lighting for modern dance and special effects for Broadway shows (somebody has to make those explosions during Les Mis), so it’s not surprising that he’d find an unusual project to occupy himself as retirement nears.
Unusual, but not easy.
“I’ve been working on this seriously for five years,” said Meeh as he gave a tour of Cold Garden Spirits distillery, which fills half the barn on the property where he has lived since he was 2 years old, just north of Shaker Village in Canterbury.
The distillery, brought in from Austria, has a gorgeous copper kettle and distillation tower – copper for utility rather than appearance, because the metal interacts with spirits in interesting ways – and produced its first spirits in July. You can stop by the tasting room on Saturdays and Sundays to try two types of corn whiskey made using different yeasts, and a fruit liquor called “eau de vie” made from a fermented mix of apples, peaches, grapes, quince and northern kiwi.
These are, by necessity, raw spirits (“nouveau” is the industry term) that hasn’t had the months or years aging in wooden casks which helps define most spirits. Meeh has various mixes aging in casks – including “pomme eaux,” spirits mixed with apple cider to create sweetness – but sales of nouveau spirits are helping bring the new operation up to speed.
“We are meeting expenses – that’s pretty good in the first year,” he said.
Cold Garden Spirits is an example of a small but growing part of New Hampshire’s local food movement, one that is following in the footsteps of the craft-brewery industry.
There are now at least 10 distilleries around the state that give public tours and tastings of their liquor, sometimes in conjunction with “agro-tourism” at farms, sometimes in conjunction with wineries, and sometimes as stand-alone operations. They sell a variety of liquors, from plain vodka to products with names like Monadnock Moonshine or Sea Hagg Silver Rum, and, like breweries, they sell the personalities and stories of the creators as much as the alcohol.
New Hampshire is part of a national trend. The American Craft Spirits Association, the number of craft distilleries (usually defined as having annual sales are less than 100,000 gallons) has gone from about 50 nationwide a decade ago to almost 800 now.
Small distilleries share something else with microbreweries: They are a labor of love as much as a business decision. Meeh said he has put more than $100,000 into creating Cold Garden Spirits, including major work on the family barn that turned a former pig pen into the distillery, his own extensive travel and training, and all the licensing and regulatory requirements. Sales are covering expenses, he notes, only because he is self-financed and doesn’t have debt payments.
Craft liquor isn’t cheap: Cold Garden Spirits range from $18 for a 200 ml bottle of whiskey to $50 for a 375 ml bottle of eau de vie. But customers say it’s worth it.
“I like a little apertif after dinner,” said Tyson Miller, a friend who lives on an adjoining property, as he stopped in to buy a few bottles for Christmas presents.
Miller has another perspective on Cold Garden Spirits, since he serves on the town planning board that had to give Meeh permission to turn a residence into a business.
This was an easy decision, he said: “The town is happy to have him. It goes with the location.”
Further, he said, it fits in with the Fox Country Smoke House and Canterbury Aleworks to give folks visiting Shaker Village or the not-too-far-away New Hampshire Motor Speedway a reason to hang around.
“With the smokehouse, the brewery and this place, it’s quite a tour,” Miller said.
Meeh agreed with this idea and noted that businesses like his can help other local business. Rumbletree in Laconia designed the Cold Garden Spirits logo, and local orchards can supply fruit to supplement what he grows on the family farm, including northern kiwi, a fruit that some are touting as a new cash crop for New Hampshire.
Alcohol has another advantage for local fruit production: It adds more value to an orchard’s output that probably any other use. Plus, Meeh notes, it’s a terrific way to preserve and transport local fruit – apples and apple cider only last so long, but booze gets better with age.
Meeh moved to 338 Shaker Road when he was 2 years old; he attended local schools, including Concord High School. The house is about 125 years old and was built by the Shakers – even the bricks, he said, were made on site using clay from the nearby brooks. His father, William, farmed the land and ran a dairy with about 30 cows for many years.
These days he and his wife Hillary Nelson – known to Monitor readers because she writes the paper’s food column – live on about 10 acres, surrounded by beautiful rural countryside. Their two children are grown. One noticeable aspect of their farm to passers-by is the 12-kilowatt solar array at the north edge of the field, which Meeh said covers all the electricity used by the distillery.
For now , the Cold Garden Spirits tasting room is open only weekends – Saturdays from 11:30 to 5 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m., as well as on Monday holidays from noon to 5 p.m. – as Meeh and Nelson keep their day jobs. Whether it will ever be a full-time gig is uncertain, but if nothing else, Meeh said, it will be fun trying.
“It’s been interesting, it is interesting, doing this,” he said.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek.)
