Amanda V.
Yelp
A scant 56 miles south of Michigan, you can't get much more north of here.
Having been the only person who signed up for a tour of Paradise North on a Thursday night, I had owner and distiller Tom Feld all to myself. The distillery is his retirement passion project after beginning grown up life as an environmental scientist prior to transitioning to accounting and finance. I learned about his love of Barbados rum, his Portuguese alembic still, and how he's experimenting with rum using a solera aging process. Limited by only his imagination, Tom has several small batch test runs available in the tasting room, under the Boiler Room Series label.
Tom has honored his childhood in his spirits, sourcing local grain from the same farmer his father used on their farm. A forager at heart, he uses spruce tips, prickly ash berries, and birch bark in his gin and sources Puerto Rican cocoa bean husks for his chocolate vodka.
While I came for the rum and whiskey, I stayed for the Cherry Bounce. Cherry Bounce is pretty common in Wisconsin, usually made at home in a Mason jar with those famous Door County cherries, a neutral spirit, and sugar. Tom puts his own spin on this tradition by aging it in his bourbon barrels. While currently available in the tasting room, this is unfortunately a seasonal spirit that won't be for sale again until later this summer.
Looks like there will be a return trip in my future!
