Story

What’s in a Name?
Tommy chose the name Wildfether as a homage to his mom who passed away when he was younger. She was always his #1 supporter , even when he would come up with crazy business ideas like opening a distillery in a dry town. Tommy always heard a story about her finding a feather while walking outside and making it into an earring that she would wear around while he was growing up. Wildfether captures that story and the free sprit that made her so fun to be around.

The Jennings House
Wildfether Distilling is located in a historic Victorian House built in 1857. The house is located next to Haddonfield’s Borough Hall and was the home of Civil War-Era physician Napolean Bonaparte Jennings. We consider ourselves stewards of the building and are focused on preserving the historical elements of the building. For the interior, we aimed to mix historical with modern in order to create a new-age speakeasy environment.

Our Cocktail Program
When creating cocktails for our menus, we have some principles that guide our research, development, and innovation. We focus on using local and seasonal ingredients to the best of our abilities. This allows us to utilize ingredients at the peak of their seasonality, know where we are sourcing ingredients from, reduce our carbon footprint, and teach our guests about sustainability through seasonality.

All of our cocktails are made to order and driven by technique, science, and craft. We operate under a distilling license. According to our license and state laws we are able to sell alcohol for consumption on site. The caveat is that we must produce everything on site. This means that we make everything from scratch including all of our seasonal syrups, cordials, infusions, bitters, and liqueurs by our prep team every week. Isn’t that groovy?

Whiskey is our Passion
Wildfether was built around making the best tasting whiskey possible. Then using that whiskey to make amazing cocktails in our tasting room and selling bottles for our guests to enjoy at home. We make four types of whiskey - Bourbon, Rye, Wheat, and Single Malt. Every week we fill two 53 gallon barrels full of Wildfether whiskey and squirrel it away to be enjoyed years down the line.

Our Whiskey Making Process
1. Grain. We start with local, organic heirloom grains. We believe our Whiskey is only as good as the grain we start with. In grains, protein provides taste and flavor while carbohydrates provide alcohol. By using heirloom grains we are choosing flavor over maximum efficiency. Plus we are able to support local farmers that we have built intimate relationships with!

2. Mash. Our mashing process is focusing on highlighting the flavors that come from our local heirloom grains. Instead of using 3+ grains, our mash bills consist of 80% of the main grain, either corn, rye, or wheat + a high malt mash bill where malted barley makes up the other 20%. The exception is Single Malt Whiskey which is 100% malted barley. These mash bills allow the grain to shine and show off its particular flavors.

3. Centrifuge. We love focusing on historic techniques to make whiskey but this is where we introduce technology. We use a centrifuge to separate the grain from the mash before fermentation. This allows us to carry over more delicate flavors and produce a whiskey with the same technique that is usually only used for Single Malt Whiskey.

4. Fermentation. We ferment our mash for 12 days. The primary fermentation takes about 3 days to complete. Then we rest it for another 9 days during its secondary fermentation. This adds more complex flavors. We utilize racking arms on our fermenters so we can remove the yeast before distillation which we can only do because the grains are already removed.

5. Distillation. We double distill our whisky in copper pot stills. Our wash is very clean (and tasty!) since we have removed the grain and yeast in previous steps. This allows us to avoid boiling the grain or yeast and adding those off flavors into our whiskey. The first distillation is called a stripping run. The stripping run is hot and fast to concentrate the alcohol. The second run is called a spirit run. The spirit run is run slow so we can focus on taking a narrow hearts cut of the best tasting whiskey.

6. Barreling. We buy our barrels locally from Adirondack Cooperage in Glenville, NY. The barrels are char#3. We are currently filling 53 gallon barrels but the bulk of our current stock is in 30 gallon barrels. We put our whiskey in at a very low barrel proof, 50% ABV. While this has the side effect of a lower yield from each barrel, it produces the best tasting whiskey.

7. Bottling. We bottle all of our whiskey at barrel strength. This means that we do not add a drop of water after filling our barrels. Due to evaporation during the aging process, the whiskey comes out at a higher ABV than it went in and is bottled in the 51-52% range. This severely limits our yield but our principles are guided by taste and quality, not efficiency.