Virgil Kaine, the Danville Train, Bourbon, and Ginger

 

Charleston’s David Szlam began venturing in to the spirit world about a year and a half ago last May. No. He’s not in to ghosts or anything like that (although there is a dead Confederate soldier at the center of what he’s doing). He’s the co-founder of Virgil Kaine — a spirits manufacturer in the Holy City who is turning the Bourbon world on its ear.

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How do you go from the restaurant world to spirits maker? Drawing any connection to the two is tough.

Yeah, well, I went to the College of Charleston, started cooking in restaurants to make cash to get by and I really fell in love with craft, cooking and being in that environment and creating.  I spent some time cooking in Charleston for about 3 or 4 years.  I worked at several restaurants around town and thought it would be a good idea to get out of here and go somewhere like San Francisco or New York to go to culinary school.  I chose San Francisco because of the quickness of the training ramp and went out to San Francisco, worked in 6 or 7 of the top 10 restaurants in town and learned as much as I could.  And I came back to Charleston, I opened a restaurant and then, after we sold the restaurant, I started doing consulting work and brand development and then, I was doing brand development and working on some concepts and this idea kind of came to me and here we are today.

Where is your distribution right now?  Originally, you started in the Lowcountry.  Are you still kind of within the bounds of South Carolina or have you started moving outside and taking more of a regional turn?

Currently, we are just in South Carolina.  We are in talks with Georgia, Tennessee.  We are currently legal and licensed to sell in those states so we are working out…you know, talking to some distributors.  We’re pretty close to Georgia.

How did Virgil Kaine the character lead you to the brand tie-in?

Well, Virgil Kaine was a character, he was on the Danville Train and he was responsible for providing ammunition and supplies to the soldiers during the Civil War and the legend of Mr. Virgil Kaine is that he was also bootlegging booze so we thought what better type of person to represent a Southern company than a man that as bootlegging booze across the South.  And it’s kind of what we’re going, you know.  We’re starting something small, something craft, that not a lot of people have done in the South and kind of bootlegging it out here even though we’re taking, obviously, the legal direction.  For us to try to get into this conglomerate market of huge companies, it kind of feels like we’re out there peddling and doing it like they would in the old days.  Face to face and all that kind of stuff instead of the multi-million dollar marketing budget, we’re doing it day to day and we really appreciate it if Southern roots and the product’s name ring well.  It’s a little more Southern than Dave Szlam, even though I was…born in the South.  But that’s what inspired us.

People have always mixed Bourbon but yours isn’t a mix. It’s an infusion.  You’ve got some distillers who have been infusing spirits with honey and cherry. What made you guys settle on using ginger?

Well, in the South, Bourbon and ginger ale used to be a Southern classic, if you will, and the reason I picked ginger in regard to that…obviously because of the Southern classic Bourbon and ginger ale but, more so, I love the way that ginger, real ginger, and Bourbon harmonize together.  I mean, ginger has its own spice, it has its own sweetness and I really wanted something…one of the reasons, when I was drinking Bourbon in college, we would mix these cheap Bourbons with ginger to kind of mask that nasty up front burn that you get with a not-so-good Bourbon, or whatnot.  And I just thought, we have a good Bourbon and we add some ginger to it that has a spice of its own and that spice is going to mask whatever heat is left from the Bourbon itself and then, if we round it out with a little bit of vanilla at the end, it will take away from that aftertaste you get with some Bourbons that are unpleasant.  I wanted something that was going to be approachable from all directions, females, men, newcomers to the Bourbon community, those types of things, something very approachable.  The one thing I saw interesting in the Bourbon world, most people, when they take their first sip of Bourbon, it’s…on the shelf for … weeks.  They’re not really going to come back for a second round and I wanted to make something a little more palatable and approachable and that ginger really seemed to match well with the Bourbon.

What’s the process of going with that infusion?  How do you make that magic happen?

We use fresh ginger, we peel it and we macerate it with some Bourbon and…ratio to the large batch and mix it until…We take some ginger and we macerate it in some Bourbon, incorporate the flavors and then we let that sit for a few days and once that infusion is…then we transfer it over to the larger…pot and we run it through a filter that really clarifies it.  Well, we filter it to take out any nasty flavors that might still be left over and also any particles that are floating, things like that.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

• Visit Virgil Kaine online HERE.
• Visit Virgil Kaine on Twitter HERE.
• Visit Virgil Kaine on Facebook HERE.

PHOTO CREDIT: Virgil Kaine on Facebook