Weldon Mills Rockfish Whiskey

Weldon Mills Distillery

$24.95 - Found here at their website

40%ABV

NAS

While Rockfish is unavailable in VA and MD stores, you can get a bottle online.  They’ll happily ship it to VA and MD.  Virginia and Maryland have relatively relaxed laws for alcohol delivery fulfillment. However, shippers must still remain compliant with city and local laws, and the destination state laws if sending out of state. Most of these states require a license to ship. Check with a state attorney or your state’s website for extra clarification. 

I checked and can confirm that in Maryland and Virginia, we can have whiskey shipped to us.  Can Weldon Mills deliver to you?  The website, eposnow.com, helps us navigate which states all shipping and which ones have restrictions.  If your state doesn’t allow shipping booze to you or has unreasonable restrictions, well, that sounds like a good way to make connections to your fellow residents and work together to get that law changed!

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Some time ago I was traveling down I-95 when I came upon a billboard advertising a distillery in the distance.  Needing to stop anyway, I figured I’d take a break at their visitor’s center.  I was not disappointed.  Their visitor’s center is impressive.  A very old building, it served as a factory and for some time, the Weldon community center.  While chatting with their friendly and professional staff, I tasted their ‘Select Bourbon’, ‘Soldier’s Cut Bourbon’, and ‘Rockfish Whiskey’.  I enjoyed all three and bought a bottle of the Rockfish Whiskey but didn’t open it until I got home a week later.

While enjoying my Rockfish, I perused their label.  As I’ve said before, the label is designed to tell you a lot about what’s inside.  However, distillers can be quite sly when it comes to how they say things.  As we’ve seen many times before, if they say the whiskey was distilled in ‘Indiana’ (usually in tiny print), it’s a pretty good bet that it’s an MGP product.  And as we’ve seen before, two MGP whiskies with the same mashbill can taste dramatically differently in their respective distiller’s bottles.  We’ve covered this numerous times.

On Weldon Mills’ website, listed under ‘House Spirits’, the distillery tells us, “...This is an American Whiskey that drinks similar to an Irish Whiskey, with notes of caramel and vanilla. This Whiskey is perfect for your standard highball cocktail.” 

In the tasting I was getting the comparison to Irish whiskey.  Perhaps that was just a whiskey tasting power of persuasion.  I figured my wife would like it and I wasn’t wrong.  When I got it home and tasted it again, I was surprised how sweet it is.  She loved it with one ice cube.  For those new to whiskey, I think the Rockfish is a great place to start.

So, when we look at the Rockfish label, we see “Produced and Bottled by Weldon Mills Distillery LLC in Weldon, NC”.  They distill their own juice, age it, and bottle it.  That’s great.  Good for them.  But something seemed different.  I couldn’t put my finger on it at first.  Then it dawned on me.  Yes, it’s labeled as ‘whiskey’, but it’s not ‘straight’ whiskey.  

We see the word ‘straight’ on so many whiskey bottles that the meaning starts to fade, however, it is a very important word.  ‘Straight’ whiskey was part of the Bottled-In-Bond Act of 1897.  Several distillers got together and lobbied Congress for a definition of whiskey and worked to prevent unscrupulous distillers from marketing tainted products.  Tainted products were common at that time.  I won’t describe how they tainted their products (I could tell you, but then I can’t UN-tell you.)  It was bad.  In fact, the Bottle-In-Bond Act was the first pure foods act of the era with more to soon follow.

From Wikipedia we learn:  In America the only allowed modifications to straight whiskey prior to its bottling consist of batching whiskey from different barrels (and sometimes from different distilleries, although only from within the same state), chill filtering the whiskey, and adding water to reduce proof while retaining at least a 40% abv concentration.  Extra ingredients, such as caramel coloring, are forbidden in straight whiskey.  Flavoring is also prohibited in ‘straight’ whiskey.

And that got me thinking:  Rockfish is so sweet and it’s not labeled as a ‘straight whiskey’.  I wonder if it’s got some flavoring added.  So, I called the Weldon Mills visitor center and had a pleasant conversation with Sheree, one of the ladies who works in their tasting room.  If you visit their distillery, I recommend asking for her.  Sheree is really wonderful.  She happily confirmed that there is, in fact, vanilla butterscotch flavorings in the Rockfish whiskey.  Ha!  I was right!  

It’s the small victories that mean so much.  But, what does that mean about Rockfish Whiskey?  Nothing, really.  It’s a whiskey.  The distiller is looking for a certain flavor profile and achieving it with some legitimate flavorings - like any liquor or blended whiskey and making a pretty tasty product.  Realizing that it’s not a straight whiskey and knowing that it’s got some flavorings in it really doesn’t change much.  If you like it, enjoy it.  I’ve included a tasty Rockfish summer cocktail.  I recommend it for your next bar-b-que.  Tɛɛth lɔa̱c a ŋot ma̱th!

Cocktail

Summer Sour

Ingredients

2 oz Weldon Mills Rockfish Whiskey

1 oz lavender syrup

1 oz lemon juice

Now I gotta make ‘lavender syrup’?  Ugh.  Here’s how to do it…

Lavender Syrup 

• 1 cup water

• 1 cup white sugar 

• 1 tablespoon fresh lavender blossoms

• Combine water, sugar, and lavender blossoms in a saucepan over medium-high heat.

• Bring to a boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Reduce heat and simmer for 1 minute. Remove from heat and let syrup steep for about 30 minutes.

• Pour syrup into a sterilized glass jar through a mesh strainer to remove blossoms; let cool.