thepourlife One Sunday after enjoying brunch at Hawthorne on 14th and U St, we stumbled (quite literally) upon District Distilling. After a morning of bloodies and mimosas, why not continue our buzz with some spirits? While our experience with distilleries has been limited, we find the process intriguing and are excited to learn what makes each location different. District has only been open for a few months, but the process has been over four years in the making. One of the partial owners gave us a tour, complete with a generous tasting for $10. The Christian Carl copper equipment compliments the rustic atmosphere, preserving the origins of the DC building. The pipes and tubes run through the facility like an artsy maze. Don’t look at it if you already have the drunken spins.
District makes vodka, rum, and gin in their facility. They also create their own whiskey by blending 5 year and 10 year Bourbons. While some distilleries import beer (mash) to distill, District starts from scratch, even sourcing local malt and grains when possible. Each liquor runs through 42 plates in the distillation process (that means they it distill it 42 times for those of you that frequent triple distilled Smirnoff). The tasting room is a narrow portion of the main level, separate from the distilling equipment. The large windows across the front of the building let in plenty of light to reflect off seemingly endless shelves of bottles across the length of the room. There are two tasting bars to split up the crowds if necessary, but we didn’t have much problem fitting in our group of 6. The tasting was a nice casual pace with more than generous pours. Hell, at ten bucks it is better than the deals you can find a most happy hours in this area. After repeat samples of everything District had to offer, we settled on a bottle of the Checkerbark American Dry Gin as our souvenir.
Upstairs from the stills, there is a full restaurant and bar. Seeing that we had just had brunch, we didn’t stick around for a snack this time. However, the restaurant looked great and we hope to make it back there to complete our experience. All in all, we were genuinely impressed by the friendly and knowledgeable staff, the quality spirits, and the transformation of the old DC row building into a beautiful distillery.
Original Date of Visit: October 30, 2016
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