Photo by Todd Wright Photography courtesy Pegasus Books
Shelly Sackier remembers her first sip of whisky like it was yesterday, seamlessly recounting details ranging from its flavor profile to the mannerisms of the gentleman in Scotland who poured it. A singer and songwriter in a past life, Sackier is a Wisconsin native and mom who’s also the director of distillery education for Reservoir Distillery. She has chronicled her adoration and curiosity for the spirit, as well as her journey sharing it with others, in her recently released memoir that blends entertainment and education, “Make It a Double.”
Richmond magazine: How did you get interested in whiskey?
Image courtesy Pegasus Books
Shelley Sackier: From being wrong. [Laughs] Back when I was 22, I took my first trip to Scotland. This was my very first taste of single-malt scotch, my first handshake with brown spirits, and it was most unforgiving. It was foul and really abrasive on my taste buds. I thought, “Why would anybody make the mistake of doing this a second time? Never again will I put this liquid to my lips.” That evening, we were at this beautiful countryside hotel, and the barkeep came up to us and said, “Would you like a dram of whisky before you sit down to eat?” And my soon-to-be husband said, “Don’t waste your precious gold liquor on this girl, she has no taste for whisky whatsoever.” The barkeep told me to please give it a second try and said, “Let me give you something I think you’ll find more palatable and approachable,” and brings out a bottle he says they refer to as a lady’s malt. He said, “Smell it and taste it — it will have aromas of vanilla and cheesecake and flowers,” and he was making it sound like a marmalade cosmopolitan. I tasted it and said, “Oh, God, this is actually really warming and soul-soothing and pleasing.” All the aromas and flavors were just gorgeous, and that is how it started. That one man, he pivotally changed the direction of my whole life from then on. I said, “I have to unearth all of this. I don’t want to just taste it, I want to learn how it’s made and the science behind it and every bit of production and technique,” and year by year, visit by visit, this enormous passion and great curiosity had to be satiated.
RM: What was the road after that realization?
Sackier: It was both frustrating and satisfying. It required an enormous amount of muscle to make my way into some of these distilleries just to ask the questions I was developing each time I would either do a tour, or at this particular time, a lot of distilleries didn’t have any tours available, so I was just knocking on the back of the door — “Can I come in and see your factory?” Speaking to folks who lived in those smaller villages and hearing their stories and all the gorgeous folklore and storytelling that usually accompanied those drams and distilleries was heady in and of itself. I began writing everything down and was putting them into essay form for a blog so that I wouldn’t forget them. I thought it was a great place to canonize this information. I started writing about it for people following my blog, and then people started asking me to talk about it and speak about it, and eventually I was writing books and then found myself at Reservoir Distillery, where I happened to be doing research.
RM: How long was the process of writing a book, and what were some of the big challenges?
Sackier: Feels like I have never not been writing this book — I’ve been working on this for over two decades because I wanted to track this transformation I was going through. I had that initial negative, really visceral, nauseous to my body kind of reaction, and because of one person and because my next experiences were paired with folklore and history and the destinations and the craftsman I met and everything that embodied the spirit, I saw in real time how influential and crucial they were to rewiring my brain to welcome something foreign. Challenge-wise, I think the greatest two challenges I had were myself and, long ago, men. So it wasn’t a hugely warm welcome for women in a male-dominated industry 20 years ago. The second aspect was believing them, believing that I didn’t deserve to be there or understand the concepts. Eventually I did overcome that imposter syndrome and recognize that all I needed in order to be there was just the desire and hunger to learn.
RM: What does your director of distillery education role at Reservoir Distillery entail?
Sackier: That was a position created for me by [Reservoir co-founder] Dave Cuttino. He asked me why I wasn’t working in the industry, and I said, “Because I’m a writer,” and he said, “No, you should be working for a distillery and squeeze out every last drop of knowledge you have been culminating over these past decades.” I’m a Swiss Army-knife employee because there are a lot of different things I do, from writing all the technical manuals for the distillery to knowing how the equipment works. I started here three years ago officially, but unofficially about five years ago.
RM: If we go to your house, what bottles are in your liquor cabinet?
Sackier: First of all, they would explode out of a cabinet. I think I currently have around 200 different types of whiskey — at the height, I had from 220 or so. We definitely keep a rotation list of them. It’s really hard to pass up something that is done by creative people or you’ve read great reviews about or were given as a gift by someone who knows my likings. I am so enthusiastic to try as many different countries’ spirits and their interpretations of what can be done with grains. It’s a marvelous way to learn about a culture, by what they’re doing through the art of distillation.
