Episode 257: Mad River Distillers with John Egan Show Notes
Mad River Distillers with John Egan: Vermont Whiskey, Maple Smoke, and Learning by Doing
We’re back in Vermont this week with John Egan, who co-founded Mad River Distillers with his wife, Maura Connolly, in Warren.
Mad River started with an 1840s farm, an old horse barn that needed saving, and no firm plan for what would eventually happen inside it. John and Maura briefly considered a winery before a friend steered them toward spirits that made more sense for Vermont. Their contractor, Alex Hilton, became increasingly interested in the distilling side while renovating the barn, and by the end of the project John asked if he wanted to become their head distiller.
More than a decade later, Alex is still there.
That beginning fits the way Mad River has developed. There was no perfect blueprint. They learned from consultants, conferences, other distillers, and then from their own mistakes. Early advice had them heating corn mashes close to boiling and crash-cooling them so they could squeeze in two mashes a day. The resulting whiskey tasted burnt, so they slowed the process down, dropped to one mash a day, and focused on flavor instead of throughput. Fermentation, cuts, barrels, and warehouse management all went through similar adjustments over the years.
Rum was actually the first spirit off the still in spring 2013, followed by apple brandy that fall. Whiskey came shortly afterward, with bourbon and rye becoming the main focus by 2014. From early on, John and Maura wanted to distill everything themselves and work with ingredients from the Northeast wherever they could.
That has led to long relationships with regional farmers, including a Massachusetts farm supplying heirloom rye. John first called after reading about them in The New York Times, and they sent a thousand pounds of grain without a contract or deposit. Thirteen years later, Mad River is still buying from them.
Aging Whiskey in Vermont
The original horse barn also became Mad River’s rickhouse, and Vermont’s climate gives them plenty to work with.
Summer temperatures can climb above 90 degrees near the rafters before dropping considerably at night. Winter creates another cycle, with the warehouse starting cold before heat from the nearby steam boiler pushes the temperature back upward during the day. Mad River rotates barrels around the building to give them exposure to different parts of that environment.
They’ve also learned how much the oak itself changes the timeline. Tighter-grained northern oak has worked well for some spirits but can take longer to mature whiskey, while wider-grained wood from farther south tends to give them the interaction they want sooner. Most of the whiskey is now aging in full-size 53-gallon barrels, a move they made early enough to avoid getting locked into the rapid extraction of small-barrel aging.
Those choices are finally showing their full results. Mad River has begun releasing 10-year-old whiskey from the period when John feels the production process had really settled into place.
Straight Bourbon, Burnt Rock, and Revolution Rye
The three whiskies I tasted before the interview show three pretty different sides of the distillery.
The Straight Bourbon uses corn, wheat, malted barley, and oats, with no rye. Since Mad River already planned to make a dedicated rye whiskey, they saw little reason to build spice into the bourbon too. The wheat supports the sweeter side of the corn, while oats were added primarily for texture and a fuller mouthfeel.
Burnt Rock Bourbon started with the idea of bringing maple smoke into the whiskey. The first attempt used a mash bill closer to the regular bourbon, but the maple smoke added more sweetness than they expected. They reworked the recipe, removed the oats, and brought rye into the mash bill to restore some balance.
The result started as a limited experiment and eventually became a regular release. Mad River’s tasting rooms and farmers market presence give them a useful proving ground for that kind of thing, letting people react to a new product before the distillery commits to making much more of it.
Then there’s Revolution Rye, which is 100% rye using three different rye components, including heirloom grain, toasted rye, and a small amount of chocolate-roasted rye. That last component brings cocoa and coffee-like flavors without adding anything other than roasted grain. John says rye mash days can make the distillery smell almost like chocolate cake, and some of that character carries through especially well with water, ice, or in cocktails.
Vermont Beer Becoming Vermont Whiskey
Mad River has also taken advantage of being surrounded by one of the country’s strongest craft beer cultures.
Their collaboration with Lawson’s Finest Liquids became Hopscotch, a malt whiskey made by distilling beer and aging the resulting spirit in new American oak. Other Vermont breweries have followed, with each release taking on something from the beer it started as.
A Scottish ale from Stone Corral produced a whiskey John compares to unpeated Scotch, while other beer styles brought very different results. It’s a good example of Mad River being willing to stretch the usual grain-to-glass definition when the raw material is worth using.
John is also interested in revisiting malt whiskey more directly, potentially with a Founder’s Reserve-style release, and they’ve experimented with peated bourbon as well. Vermont does have peat bogs, but they’re environmentally sensitive, so the peat itself is sourced elsewhere.
Growing in a Difficult Market
The timing for expansion is not exactly comfortable.
Craft spirits are dealing with softer demand, crowded shelves, distributor pressure, and plenty of closures. Mad River, meanwhile, has bought another still, is adding production capacity, releasing older whiskey, and pushing beyond its home market.
John is realistic that this could look foolhardy in hindsight, but he also thinks the market is becoming more selective in a way that may help producers who have spent years refining their process.
Price has always been part of Mad River’s thinking too. John and Maura decided early that they didn’t want to make bottles their neighbors couldn’t afford. Most of the core whiskey sits around the $35 to $42 range, while older releases go higher without jumping straight into triple digits.
They’re also not afraid to move outside traditional whiskey formats when something works. Double Tapped Maple Bourbon has grown quickly, and their canned bourbon cocktails were built around using actual bourbon prominently enough that it still tastes like bourbon.
Fifteen Years In
I closed by asking John what he wants Mad River’s legacy to be, and he quickly widened the answer beyond himself and Maura.
Alex Hilton has gone from contractor to a head distiller with more than a decade of experience, while president Mimi Buttenheim has spent years in craft spirits herself. John wants Mad River to be something they can carry forward too.
He would like the distillery to be known for innovation, but not novelty for its own sake. That’s a useful distinction for a lineup that includes oats in bourbon, 100% rye with chocolate-roasted grain, maple-smoked barley, beer distilled into whiskey, maple barrel projects, and plenty of other experiments.
The goal is not to make something strange enough to get attention. It’s to keep finding techniques and ingredients that fit Mad River, then make them well enough that people want to come back to the bottle.
After nearly fifteen years, that still seems to be how they operate.
Mad River Distillers
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