Thank you so much to Total Wine & More for the big ad in San Antonio Express News Sunday paper. We are happy to be working with TW&M to also help us get up to the Dallas/FW market. And for all the folks that have purchased our bottles at our distillery, the bottles we sell at the distillery are commemorative bottles and are priced at full retail. Visits to our distillery include free tastings, distillery tours, and other specials such as tasting products not yet available anywhere. As a manufacturer, we will always be the highest priced because it is not good business to undercut your distribution. Total Wine & More being a large company buys at a volume level unlike most outlets. We are thrilled that they chose to feature our product at such a great price. They didn’t make much money but a whole lot of people got to try our product! We thank you for trying our product and hope to see you again.
Big news! Our new, 250 gallon copper still will be arriving next weekend from Kentucky. This makes the third still purchased from Rocky Point Copper Still Company. They will be delivering and installing it next weekend. It is a custom-made, heavy duty still that will last forever! Chris Kelley has added special features that he won't even tell us about until he gets here. We can't wait!
We are also planning for the 1st anniversary of the opening of our Tasting Room. It will be something special so stay tuned for details. Preparations on our float for the July 4 parade in Comfort are underway as well. Lots of cool stuff coming up in the next few weeks! Time is flying by at the distillery, and some big anniversaries have made that forefront in my mind. This past Saturday we celebrated one year of being fully licensed, and this summer, we will celebrate the one year anniversary of the tasting room. Wow. Who would've thought, when Cayce brought that prickly pear mash from Bandera to taste, that we would end up here? We've got our Cactus and Jalapeno Moonshine, plus the Dulces are now ready to go. This has truly been a wild ride.
Looking ahead, we anticipate the arrival of a second still and some great festivities this summer. We have done tastings all over South Texas, and bartenders are using our moonshine to create some really cool drinks. For example, the Xocolat shot is our Jalapeno Moonshine, Rumchata, and Creme de Cacao. Delicious! Also, we are getting really pumped about the Texas gin recipes we are working on for bottling later this year, so keep your ears open for news about that. Stay tuned for other news about upcoming tastings, happenings at the tasting room, and where you can by our great Hill Country Distillers products. Blogging, huh? Thoughts and musings from my busy mind could prove interesting. Pardon me if I ramble, things have been so busy that I'm starting to lose track of where we've been and where we're headed. This blog should help with that.
From Comfort, we've travelled from San Antonio to Austin, Canyon Lake to Fair Oaks, Bandera to Kerrville, Hondo and Devine. It's been a whirlwind since our opening in July, and I don't expect it to settle down anytime soon. The cool thing is that the response has been so overwhelmingly positive. People that taste our moonshines have such a broad range of ideas for different ways to use the flavors in recipes. This Sunday in Bandera, Extreme Cookers wants to use the Jalapeno for their entry in the Bloody Mary Contest. We don't know what his secret recipe is, but here is our version that we serve at the distillery: Bloody Shiner 4 oz Zing Zang Bloody Mary mix 1.5 oz Cactus or Jalapeno Moonshine Squeeze of lime Dash of Tabasco Combine ingredients in a highball glass with ice and stir. People who have visited know that we tweak classic drink recipes and use our moonshines in place of the traditional base. So when they have a new drink for us to try, we're all for it! A couple came in this past weekend and wanted a Mexican Martini. Instead of tequila we used our Cactus Moonshine, and it turned out AWESOME. We might have to add that one to our ever-growing menu. We also had someone use our Jalapeno Moonshine in their family chili recipe. That's too cool. I love that our products spark that kind of creativity in people. It means that the possibilities are limited only by our customers' imaginations! Moving forward, I expect our schedule won't let up in the near future. We have Surrender Hill coming to perform at the distillery on March 28th at 2 pm. If you want to know if we'll be in your neck of the woods, check out our Upcoming Events page and go like us on Facebook. I'm sure there will be something you'd enjoy coming up soon. This week we are launching our new Fall Cocktail menu at the cocktail bar in the tasting room! There are a lot of new great drinks on there, something for everyone. Stop by and try some of the new drinks! The new menu has been updated on our website so go take a look.
On a second note, we have just heard from our congressman and our labels have been approved by the TTB (the Feds)! Now we just have to submit them to TABC for their approval next. We estimate it should only take about 3 more weeks! So stay tuned and we will post a big announcement when TABC approves our labels so we can sell bottles. |
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