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Virginia Distillery Co.'s Courage & Conviction is a combination of three cask types: bourbon, sherry and cuvee. (Photo courtesy Virginia Distillery Co.)
When the COVID-19 shutdowns began in March, 30 miles south of Charlottesville, Virginia Distillery Co. was in full swing, bottling its flagship product, Courage & Conviction, an American single-malt whiskey five years in the making. After pivoting production to hand sanitizer for a few months, the distillery returned its focus on the hard stuff. September is Virginia Spirits Month, and in celebration, we caught up with CEO Gareth Moore to learn more about Courage & Conviction and the courage and conviction it takes to lead a spirits business during a global pandemic.
Richmond magazine: Can you tell me a little bit about the background of Virginia Distillery Co. and your flagship whiskey, Courage & Conviction?
Gareth Moore: The founder and visionary of our business was my late father. He was an Irish immigrant, and he liked single-malt Scotch whisky, not Irish whiskey, which made things more confusing than they need to be. About 18 months into the project, back in 2013, he had a heart attack and passed away. I was very naive at the time and said, “This will be easy, just a little side hustle that won’t take over my life!” So we had another 18 months of construction, got the facility open in 2015 and started distilling at that time, and we’ve been waiting for 2020, when we actually released the product.
RM: American single-malt whiskeys seem to be on the rise. Why was it important for Virginia Distillery Co. to create its own ASMW?
Moore: My father had a lifelong passion for single malts out of Scotland and Ireland. I think Dad was looking to create the next great American product and take the American tradition of immigrants taking things from the Old World — techniques and traditions — and bringing them to the new world and, not trying to replicate them, but make them better. We’re continuing that tradition of taking something from the Old World and making it better.
RM: Courage & Conviction is distilled, aged and bottled in Virginia, therefore it represents a true taste of Virginia terroir. How is that unique compared to other American single malts?
Moore: For our ASM, that’s the biggest driver of the flavor and differentiator from other global single malts or Scottish single malts. We’re in a climate that has huge variation. When I visit Ireland, my suitcase looks the same in January as it does in July. There’s always a light rain. Whereas in Virginia, we can have 4 feet of snow outside the cask houses or, like two weeks ago, when there’s a sweltering hot day with 300% humidity.Those extremes really differentiate it and gives it a sense of place. The product carries the unique fingerprint of where it was created.
RM: Virginia Distillery has a pretty big reach in terms of distribution, correct?
Moore: We’re in 23 states, primarily on the East Coast. We wanted to get depth before breadth. We’re starting to get some recognition and starting to get into those chains that will put us in larger markets now. We’ve had a product on the shelf since 2015, which was a blend of our younger whiskeys and imported Scotch whisky, called the Virginia Highland Whisky series. Now, we have a reasonable platform, which meant that, by the time that we have our true blue ASM, the Courage & Conviction product, that we have some brand equity and, more importantly, relationships with the distributors and the accounts that would be taking the product in, in the headwinds of a pandemic and global recession, we’ve been doing pretty well.
RM: Obviously it's a weird time for tasting rooms. How have you realigned operations to address tastings in the wake of the pandemic?
Moore: Tastings in liquor stores have dried up to nothing, and that’s really important when you have a new brand. Liquid to lips — let them taste it before they make a purchasing decision. We like to do tastings because we know if you like it, you’ll buy it. So, we’ve gone with the strategy of 50-ml bottles, airplane mini bottles, and we’re putting together a huge volume of them as samples because we’re convinced that if we put it out in the market and people taste it, they’ll say, "Yeah, I’m going to go ahead and buy a bottle of this because it tastes good." We’ve been doing a lot of virtual tastings.
RM: The name “courage and conviction” comes from a phrase of your dad’s. What does it mean to you, and why is that concept so important to Virginia Distillery?
Moore: It comes from the phrase “Have the courage of your convictions,” and so the idea is that if you have a belief and really you think something is going to work, let that be your strength and courage to execute. It’s something my dad liked to say a lot. And something that, in an industry that’s kind of tough, having to have a lot of patience that it’s going to taste good some day — you need a bit of courage to do a crazy thing like that. We have the conviction that we’re doing the right things, that we’re using the right cask recipes and checking in on the progress so that we’re not just crazily filling a bunch of casks, but we have the conviction that it’s going to work, both in the big picture and day to day.