Distilled in Maine: A History of Libations, Temperance & Craft Spirits

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INTRODUCTION

At the corner of two cobblestoned streets, a block from the Portland, Maine waterfront, sits a historic, three-story brick warehouse. Inside, behind the cozy, first-floor bar, several bartenders clad in plaid shirts (this is Maine, after all) are busy pouring, mixing, squeezing and shaking. Above the din of ice in metal shakers, customers order cocktails whose names haven’t been on the lips of drinkers since the end of the nineteenth century—Cobbler, Corpse Reviver, Knickerbocker—all classic cocktails first printed in Jerry Thomas’s 1862 Bar-tender’s Guide: How to Mix Drinks and given new life in the hands of today’s bartenders.

But at Central Provisions, a small-plates restaurant and bar, the cocktails that hail from a golden age of mixed drinks receive a modern update. The Cobbler, an American invention…made to suit an epicure, according to Thomas’s recipe notes, doesn’t sound like much; it’s a simple combination of sherry and sugar, shaken and garnished with orange slices.¹ But to the society set in the 1860s, the novel use of drinking straws, fresh fruit and crushed ice was impressive.

Now that the popularity of both the Cobbler and sherry have waned, the reappearance of this drink catches the eye of cocktail enthusiasts more than the crushed ice and the straw. Central Provisions’s version combines whiskey with Amontillado sherry and maraschino liqueur into a boozy, refreshing julep-like drink. The Widow’s Kiss, sidecar, julep and fizz all receive a revival or an update in this pre-Prohibition cocktail program.

At Sonny’s, a popular Old Port restaurant, the well-rounded cocktail list offers several nods to ingredients and techniques popular before and during Prohibition. In No. 1 with a Bulleit, clouds of meringue-like foam top a bourbon cocktail, its tart lemon and lime juices tempered by simple syrup and fresh strawberries. In the late 1800s, drink recipes began to call for the addition of egg whites, which, with some vigorous shaking, lends a rich texture to the final cocktail. Sipping on this delicate drink at Sonny’s lounge, with its bank-vault-turned-wine-storage, one can imagine the lively scene in a Portland speakeasy.

At Portland Hunt & Alpine Club, a cocktail bar with a modern, Scandinavian vibe, the menu provides historical tidbits about the featured cocktails. Bartenders might coat your glass with an absinthe rinse or top your cocktail with float of champagne before presenting it to you. These flourishes illustrate the lasting influence of Prohibition, during which absinthe was the darling of the young, bohemian set, much to the consternation of Prohibitionists. The backlash was so severe, that the ban on the sale of absinthe in the United States was only recently lifted in 2007. French champagne, like Canadian whiskey, appeared in many speakeasy drinks as it flowed into the country after American distilleries were shuttered.

Much of what we see in the craft cocktail revival is actually a revival of the height of drinking culture pre-Prohibition. No self-respecting cocktail bar would be complete today without fresh fruit, juice and herbs; handmade syrups and bitters; delicate glassware; and precisely cut ice. These ingredients were the hallmark of early twentieth-century cocktail culture before Prohibition attempted to stamp out the lively drinking scene.

In Maine’s largest city, the cocktails flow freely, and every new restaurant that opens is sure to have a cocktail list featuring house-made ingredients and novel concoctions. The irony of this renaissance of revelry is that it’s happening in the very city where the nation’s first prohibition legislation was enacted. A unique combination of religious morality, women’s rights, grass-roots political activism and industry produced the first legal prohibition of alcohol in Maine seventy-four years before national Prohibition was enacted. This legislation, in various forms, would exist from 1846 until the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933.

Over 150 years later, millions of tourists and residents alike largely forget the fact that Maine was the birthplace of Prohibition. Instead, Maine is well known for its local food and drink scene, driven by its strong connection to small, diversified agriculture and access to fresh seafood. In 2009, Bon Appétit magazine declared Portland the Foodiest Small Town in America, and national publications regularly heap praise on the city’s restaurants and bars.

Since its first European settlers, Maine’s economy has been driven by the extraction of natural resources: fishing, logging and paper manufacturing. Today, manufacturing remains the largest sector of the economy, but the heyday of Maine’s mill towns has passed, due to shrinking demand for paper products and increased international competition. In the latter half of the twentieth century, Maine repositioned itself as a service-based economy, largely driven by seasonal visitors seeking, according to the state’s motto, the way life should be.

Maine’s harsh winters, isolated islands, rural communities and uneven economy have created generations of self-reliant people. Those who move here from away are attracted to the entrepreneurial spirit and quality of life Maine offers. An increasing number of young farmers are settling in southern and Midcoast Maine, helping to drive the strong local food economy. The demand for local food and drink continues to increase, from locals and tourists alike, and has begun to spill over into craft cocktails and spirits.

Local craft beverages got their start with the craft beer boom in the early 1990s with industry pioneers Shipyard and Geary’s Brewing Companies. Today, craft beer is a booming business in Maine, with over sixty craft breweries in the state, thirteen of which opened within the last year. Twenty-five years since the founding of the craft beer industry, craft spirits are following suit, with Maine-made rum, whiskey, gin, vodka and brandy lining the shelves of the state’s bars and liquor stores.

Nationally, there are over six hundred craft distilleries, and the industry has doubled every three years since its start in the early 1980s. Maine currently has nine craft distilleries producing spirits, from the southernmost in coastal York to the northernmost in Oakland, a rural, central-Maine town. About half of Maine’s craft distilleries are accompanied by farm wineries, where distillers produce brandies and fortified wines. The rest are from scratch start-ups or standalone operations that distill a variety of spirits, some prioritizing the use of Maine-grown ingredients, others choosing to focus their energies solely on the handcrafted art of distillation.

While drinkers are enthusiastically embracing craft spirits, the fledging industry faces challenges within an antiquated, state-controlled distribution system. Maine’s long downright-tortured relationship with the consumption and regulation of hard liquor continues to influence laws and attitudes today. But as Maine continues to be known for its small craft beverage scene (most notably craft beer, but also fruit wines), the economic power behind the industry cannot be denied. Maine craft spirits add another facet to food-and-drink tourism and provide a market for agricultural products, both raw and value-added. Recognizing this, lawmakers and producers continue to work together to streamline the process of making and selling craft spirits in Maine.

From demon rum to craft cocktails, alcohol in Maine has undergone a transformation in the last four hundred years. Rum once drove Maine’s industry, wealth and development; sent many into ruin and the grave; and incited local riots and a national revolution. Its most ardent consumers triggered a backlash so severe that Maine state laws prohibited the sale of rum for the better part of a century.

Maine-made liquor has slowly and quietly remade itself into a respected drink, imbued with history and representing the best of the state’s ingenuity and self-reliance. Today, Maine craft spirits are enjoyed in cocktail bars, oceanside and après ski, through snowy winters and refreshingly warm summers. It’s a tale of wealth, depravity, reform and bootleggers—and it’s one best enjoyed with a drink in hand.

Sherry Cobbler

Adapted from Jerry Thomas’s Bar-tender’s Guide, 1862

1 tablespoon sugar

2 or 3 orange slices

3½ ounces Amontillado sherry

Muddle sugar and oranges in mixing glass. Add sherry and ice and shake. Strain into a Collins glass filled with ice. Garnish with fresh berries and mint; serve with a straw.

1

SETTLING MAINE

The first hard liquor sloshed into Maine on European ships. Before permanent English and French settlements, the Maine coast had been explored by settlers hoping to find a shorter shipping route to the Pacific Ocean. In 1525, Giovanni Da Verrazano, an Italian exploring for France, mapped the Maine coast; a year later, Estevan Gómez sailed up the Penobscot River to modern-day Bangor, looking for the entrance to the fabled Northwest Passage. In 1602 and 1603, English sailors Bartholomew Gosnold and Martin Pring captained ships from the Azores into Maine’s southern harbors before settling Cape Cod in Massachusetts. These men arrived with ships’ holds full of hogsheads of brandy and wine.

Once in Maine, these eager explorers encountered the eastern Abenaki. Native peoples of this region typically lived by the seasons, moving from the coast to the forests as available resources dictated. They hunted, fished and enjoyed tea and fruit-flavored beverages, but no evidence exists of any alcohol production. European settlers would eventually introduce brandy and other liquor, but during their first few brief meetings, the Abenaki traded for knives, fishhooks, tobacco and metal. However, it didn’t take long for the cordial relationship to sour.

In 1605, English explorer George Weymouth landed on Monhegan Island and explored what he named the St. George River. He and his men encountered the native people, who shared their fire and tobacco pipes with the newcomers. After a few days, and satisfied with their cataloguing of the trees, fowles, fishes, beasts, fruits, plants, and herbs, the company lured five Abenaki men—Manido, Assacomoit, Skicowaros, Amoret and Tahanedo (or Dehaneda)—on board their ship.² Their trophies collected, the men quickly pulled anchor and sailed back to England.

Intrigued by Weymouth’s exotic hostages and reports, his employer, Ferdinando Gorges, quickly funded two more ships to sail to Maine. While technically owned by Spain, the eastern seaboard of the New World was up for grabs, and France had recently staked a claim. A few French settlers were attempting to live on Saint Croix Island, in a river of the same name, which today forms the border between the United States and Canada. In reaction, England’s King James I funded an expedition enacted by Gorges. Two ships left England, one bound for the north and one for the south of this new land called Virginia.

In August 1607, a few months after the famous Jamestown settlement was founded, two small ships carrying 120 men (including the kidnapped Tahanedo) landed in Midcoast Maine at the mouth of the Kennebec River. These men were discharged soldiers, farmers, coopers, shipwrights and carpenters and led by George Popham and Raleigh Gilbert.

When they arrived, they set about building a star-shaped fort on a rocky prominence over the river to protect their colony. Come winter, lacking the time to cultivate a harvest, half of the men left on one of the ships, while the others would abandon the colony by the end of the following year.

What we know about the Popham Colony comes from the map of one colonist, John Hunt. The map, titled the Draught of St. Georges fort Erected by Captayne George Popham Esquier one the entry of the famous River of Sagadahock, in Virginia taken out by John Hunt the viii day of october in the yeare of our Lorde 1607, showed a great settlement, embellished with firing cannons, flags flapping and a small sailboat anchored at the shore.³

Like the Popham Colony, the settlement of Pemaquid was one of the earliest European settlements in Maine. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ds-02398.

An archaeological dig in 1994 turned up evidence of four of the map’s fifteen structures at the Popham Colony. Postholes established the fort’s wall and, within it, two houses and two store rooms. The admiral’s house, occupied by Gilbert after Popham died midwinter, was a simple structure, within which the archaeologists found evidence of the resident’s high class: glass buttons and shards of fine pottery and glass bottles. One particular piece of pottery was determined to be from a Bartmann jug, a German earthenware jug for holding wine and liquor. Despite the indignity of living in a mud hut, Gilbert maintained the lifestyle of a wealthy Englishman, enjoying his brandy and wine.

Of the two storehouses, one was the buttery room, storage specifically for wine and liquor. The site was never fully excavated, so it remains unknown if