George Washington’s fame as a soldier
and president has tended to
overshadow his considerable
accomplishments as farmer, architect,
livestock breeder, and entrepreneur.
He worked tirelessly to improve the
profitability and efficiency of his
8,000-acre Mount Vernon estate. In
his late 20s, he made the decision to
turn from tobacco as his main crop to
wheat. In 1771, he built a gristmill, a
profitable venture that enabled him to
market his flour both locally and
abroad. In 1797, at the urging of his
Scottish plantation manager James
Anderson, who had experience in
distilling, Washington built a distillery
adjacent to the mill. The distillery,
one of the largest on the East Coast,
made 11,000 gallons of whiskey the
first year and produced a profit of
$7,500, an enormous sum at the time.

The gristmill was restored and opened to the public in 2002. Now, with the assistance of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, a trade association of distillers and wholesalers, Washington’s distillery is
being reconstructed and will open to
the public in 2006 as the only
operating 18th-century-style distillery
in the country.

The first step in the restoration has
been an extensive archeological
excavation of the site. The dig, which
began in 1999, is now in its final
stages. The excavation and research
into contemporary documents have
revealed that Washington’s distillery
was a large sandstone building, about
30 by 75 feet, which held about 50
mash tubs and five pot stills. A second
floor, which originally was used for
grain storage and living quarters for
the distillery manager, will be
transformed into a museum and
auditorium.

The Vendome Copper and Brass
Works of Louisville, Kentucky, will
fabricate the distillery’s five copper pot
stills. They are replicas of an 18th century still, now in the collection of
the Smithsonian Institution, confiscated by the Treasury Department in Fairfax County, Virginia, in the 1940s.

A model of the still was fired up last
fall at the site, and the master distillers
from a dozen modern distilleries, all
dressed in 18th-century costumes for
the occasion, made the first whiskey
made on the site in 200 years. The
mash recipe, reconstructed from the
distillery’s accounts, consisted of 60
percent rye, 35 percent corn, and 5
percent barley, a formula that would
make it closer in composition to
today’s rye whiskey than to bourbon.
The initial batch of whiskey will be
aged for several years in Port casks and then sold to benefit Mount Vernon’s
educational programs.

The reconstruction of Washington’s
distillery is a fascinating project for
many reasons. It gives us insight into
the economics of plantation
management in the post-Colonial
South. It gives us a fascinating glimpse
of our first president as entrepreneur.
And it gives us a way of looking at the
place of alcohol in colonial society.

Did Washington drink the whiskey
he made? Probably not much. He
certainly felt it necessary to the
running of an army. “The benefits
arising from the moderate use of liquor
have been experienced in all armies,”
he wrote to the president of Congress,
“and are not to be disputed.” Records
confirm that in addition to whiskey,
also distilled here were apple, peach,
and persimmon brandy, and these fruit
brandies are probably the spirits that
Washington and his guests drank.

THOMAS HEAD