Brooklyn, New York-based Fort Hamilton Distillery is the brainchild of mixologist Alex Clark and his wife Amy Grindeland. It was launched in 2016 with the idea of spotlighting New York’s pre-Prohibition legacy as a center for rye whiskey. The distillery takes its name from a historic military installation in Brooklyn that once served as a coastal artillery battery during the Revolutionary War, from where American patriot soldiers fired cannonades at British warships as they sailed through the entrance to New York Harbor.
Alas, no whiskey is made at the distillery, though it does produce a gin. Alex Clark makes the whiskey at Taconic Distillery in Stanfordville (near Rhinebeck) in New York’s Hudson River Valley, about 90 miles north of New York City, and it’s then aged in Brooklyn. The final blends also include sourced distillate from out of state. Previous expressions from Fort Hamilton have included Double Barrel Blended bourbon, Double Barrel rye, and a single barrel rye.
Now Fort Hamilton has a new single barrel bourbon in its core lineup. This bourbon is made from grains grown in the Hudson Valley: 85% non-GMO corn, 10% winter rye, and 5% two-row malted barley. The distillate was aged at the distillery’s Brooklyn location, using 53-gallon char No.-3 American white oak barrels, for 4 ½ years. It entered the barrel at 62.5% ABV and was cut back to 47.5% before bottling. “We decided on a high-corn, low-rye bourbon in order to have something in our portfolio for everyone,” says Clark. It’s currently available online at a suggested retail price of $55.
As for bringing distillation in-house, Clark says it just isn’t feasible for him to distill whiskey in Brooklyn. “We looked very seriously at bringing whiskey distillation here also, which would require an even bigger space,” said Alex. “But [we] paused that for a multitude of reasons.” Among those are facility space and cost, along with environmental and commercial sustainability. He plans to continue distilling Fort Hamilton’s whiskey at Taconic for the foreseeable future and has no plans to phase out the sourced components of his blends.
