Dragonfyre Distillery - Marathon, NY

[WhiskeyProposition]

My brother and I went distillery-hopping yesterday up around the Finger Lakes in NY. Our first stop was Finger Lakes Distilling, home of McKenzie whiskeys. I had purchased a bottle of BIB earlier in the week but that's going on the plane ride home. We did a quick tasting. Their Pot Still and BIB were quite good, I thought.

 

Our next stop was Myer Farm Distillers. I'm not trying to badmouth them, but it was an underwhelming experience. We were given those tiny little plastic cups and the amount of whiskey poured wasn't enough to even coat the tongue. We were given our pours and my brother and I just looked at each other like 'really?'. I'm not sure how they expect to sell product if they don't give you enough to form an opinion. We paid quickly and left. It might have been great stuff, but I wasn't paying for 4 more tastings to find out.

 

Finally, we set our GPS to French Distillers & Alchemists. On the way, I was looking around and came across one called Dragonfyre Distillery. We added that as a stop before French's and man I'm glad we did. 

 

The owner's name is Vince - super cool guy. Gave a nice tour of his setup, discussed the challenges of operating a one-man distillery and told us about some interesting upcoming planned distillations. He gave generous pours for the tastings, which was much appreciated. I tried a total of seven. In addition to the five shown in the photo, I also tried the Dragon in the Rye (100% rye) and Dragon Moon Shadow (100% corn whiskey aged with toasted oak chips). I'm no tasting expert, I can't sit and give multiple nose or palate notes for each, but I was honestly impressed with everything I tried. The Three Towers and Dragon's Gold both have a smoky taste that I really enjoyed. The smoke in the Three Towers comes from aging on toasted oak chips whereas the the Dragon's Gold is made with smoked barley. The Acer Draconis was really enjoyable. I steer away from flavored whiskeys but thought I would try this. Vince sends some of his used whiskey barrels to a local maple syrup producer. They fill them with the syrup and after a few months, I believe it is, empty them and send them back to VInce, who then refills them with his product. The maple nose is nice and the palate is really pleasant. The maple is very light and was just enough to make me want some pancakes.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this visit and will definitely be back on future visits to NY. If anyone is in the vicinity, I would highly recommend checking them out. I will say the pricing is up there, but I'm more than happy to spend a bit more to support someone like this. It was a great experience.