Somerset Co., PA (WJAC) — Whiskey lovers – listen up! After years of anticipation, the Ponfeigh Distillery is officially open.
The founder of the Ponfeigh Distillery says that there is a strong history of whiskey in Somerset County, and he plans to bring that back with this distillery.
For the past 15 years, Maximilian Merrill focused on not only crafting whiskey, but opening his own distillery in Somerset County.
“I just sort of learned all the whiskey heritage that we lost in Somerset County, and it’s always been a dream for about 15 years to bring back that heritage that the county lost.”
Merrill says he searched all over Somerset for the perfect location for his distillery.
“We came upon this old 84 Lumber site, and we figured it was a pivotal place to bring back and start a distillery to pay tribute to all those distillers that we lost.”
Merrill and his crew say this location is now home to the largest distillery in Pennsylvania.
“Right now, this is by far the biggest distillery in Pennsylvania. There’s a lot of people coming online though so I don’t know how long well hold that title,” says Master Distiller Brendon Rawlings.
“We can produce over 3,000 barrels a year. We have fermentation tanks that are over 16 thousand gallons of fermentation so we can produce whiskey 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if we need to.”
Currently, they are bottling their 95-percent rye, 5 percent malted barley whiskey, which is available for tasting and sale Wednesday through Sunday.
“It’s very smooth. It has a lot of notes of honey, maple syrup, but also a little bit of ‘oakiness’ at the end.”
“Coming next year, in 2024, we will also have a couple other spirits including a Maryland style rye which has a larger corn content, and we will also a rye aged rum and a rye aged gin.”
Merrill says besides other spirits, they plan to bring more to the distillery.
“We will open up our full tasting room at the end of the spring for people to come for drinks and music, and then the other step is our outside amphitheater where we’ll have music, larger bands and be able to house 2,000 people in the parking lot.”
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