"Come guess me this riddle: What beats pipe and fiddle? What's hotter than mustard and milder than cream? What best wets your whistle? What's clearer than crystal? What's sweeter than honey and stronger than steam?"
So lilts the old Irish folk song, "The Humours of Whiskey." It sings the power of ancient whiskey, an English borrowing of the Gaelic word "usquebaugh," which means "water of life."
Tucked between ponderosas in the Selkirk foothills of Clayton, Washington, a few all-but-forgotten Old World recipes for these "waters of life" are being resurrected in the New World. Will Persons is the craft distiller and owner of Olde Tyme Spirits, a line of Celtic brandies and some traditional Slavic spirits. Armed with a cookbook of centuries-old recipes handwritten by his grandfather, Persons is reintroducing spirits distilled from apples, apricots, cherries and plums that are older than America itself.
In today's legal world, "whiskey" has to be distilled from fermented grain, so Persons' fruit-based spirits don't count. But he's convinced that anyone singing about "water of life" a hundred years ago would have been sipping on something similar to the smooth, rich spirits that he's creating today.
Persons' distillery is the last property on a dead-end road, made from pine slabs he preserved by charring with fire. You can see the ski slopes of Mount Spokane from the top of the driveway.
Inside, five-gallon buckets hold masticated, fermenting fruit. The black cast-iron presser in the corner helps squeeze out the last drop of fruit juice. A still glints silver in the sunlight, with a long copper pipe dripping clear liquid into a holding tank. Glass jars showcase spirits in every hue from translucent to golden to amber to deep red.
Persons inhales deeply as he steps into the distillery.
"Five more minutes," he says to himself, then motions toward the still.
"This is an alembic," he says. "This system dates older than what most other distilleries use. They use what is called a column or a coffee still. What would take me three runs to do here, they do it in one run. That makes it way more efficient. But one of the things this does that they don't do..."
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He pulls a mason jar full of a clear spirit from the shelf. Held up to the sun, the light reveals tiny flecks of oil swirling around in the alcohol. A column still, he says, would strip the spirit of those precious, flavorful globules.
"A lot of the aroma, the mouthfeel, what people like about this drink is that little bit that gets meshed in," Persons says.
This particular liquid is rakia, a spirit from the Baltics in the same vintage tradition as the other Celtic brandies Persons makes. It's distilled from apricots and smells like Froot Loops. Although it's 45% ABV, it sips soft and smooth, offering the pleasant warmth of alcohol without the burn.
Olde Tyme's Apple Brandy has the same velvet mouthfeel, with spicier, charred notes of scorched popcorn, jalapeño and cinnamon. It's distilled from apples grown on Walters Fruit Ranch that didn't sell and were on the verge of rotting. Persons has also created brandies with cherries, plums, pears and persimmons from Green Bluff orchards that were otherwise going to be discarded. Every new brandy surprises the palate with complex, hidden flavors, so that you want to go back for a second, third, fourth sip.
Persons sells his spirits directly to consumers, which means local buyers can call his cellphone and ask him to deliver to their doorstep. But he insists that every customer taste his product before they decide what to buy. So he keeps a few bottles of each brandy at Egger's South Hill Liquor. Anyone who's curious can taste test the brandies before buying a few bottles from Egger's or calling Persons directly.
In his distillery, Persons suddenly sniffs the air again.
"Oh, it's been five minutes," he says to himself again. He walks over to the still and flips a switch to stop the distilling process, which is now, apparently, finished.
"A different aroma hit my nose that you probably didn't catch," he says. "It's very instinctive for me. And that's only genetic."
His whole childhood, Persons heard the family lore. He and his brothers were Celtic through and through. Important conversations happened between sips of "Apple Pie," a deep amber liquid his grandfather would produce at family gatherings seemingly out of thin air.
It wasn't until his early adult years that Persons put together that his grandfather, who always drove late-model sports cars across Washington way too fast, made extra cash by distilling and running moonshine across the state. Among Donald Persons' handwritten recipes is one from as early as 1764. Persons started crediting his uncanny knack for ratios, flavor profiles and distilling technique to this wealth of family inheritance.
A few years after Persons started distilling for fun, the gods of the "water of life" chose him again, even more explicitly. Persons' father, the patriarch of 11 sons, decided that only one could carry on the family tradition of distilling. Persons and his next older brother were both dabbling in distilling, so their father held a tasting competition and a family council to decide who was allowed to continue. It was unanimous — Persons' product was superior, and he inherited the responsibility.
It wasn't until Persons was planning a trip back to Ireland for his own family that he took a 23&Me DNA test, just to see if he was anything else but Irish. The test confirmed he was nearly 100% Celtic. But it also revealed that Persons wasn't his father's son.
"My mom is my mom," he says, "but my dad is not my dad. I was adopted, and the only reason is because I looked Celtic enough that I could pass as one of their children. And so I got this whole history that isn't even mine. I start going, 'Well, then how come I can do what I can do?'"
Some ties are stronger than blood, or at least it would seem Persons' father thought so, who chose his only adopted son to continue the coveted family tradition. Whatever wasn't passed down by blood was transmitted through the "water of life" passed from hand to hand in Persons' childhood memories. An Irishman, at least, would certainly believe whiskey to be that powerful.
"So stick to the cratur', the best thing in nature for drowning your sorrows and raising your joys. Oh Lord, it's no wonder if lightning and thunder was made from the plunder of whiskey, me boys." ♦
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to reflect the correct purchasing location. Olde Tyme Spirits can be found at Egger's South Hill Liquor.
