We’ve been sitting on a secret here. I mean, I hope it’s not exactly a secret, but *we* haven’t yet blogged about this amazing time we had this fall out in the Berkshires. At a distillery. An unassuming, booze-y barn turning out the most amazing gin, vodka and rum we have ever, ever tasted.

I know, I know. It sounds so hyperbolic. Like we’re just shills for any local product (not true!). But let me just say that we hardly drink the stuff, or, rather, we used to hardly drink the stuff. But we do now. As Kristi says, it is yet another luxury we cannot live without.

We stumbled on Berkshire Mountain Distillers at a tiny liquor store in Ayer on our way out to a glorious day-time summer party on a small lake. We bought the rum. It was lovely. So when we made a trip out to the Berkshires to visit friends, we wrote to the guy, Chris Weld, who runs the distillery and he graciously took me and Kristi and our friends on a tour of the place. It’s on the site of one of those old hotels where city people went to rejuvenate because the fresh spring water there supposedly had healing properties. Chris uses the water from that spring to make his liquors.

It’s in an old barn in an old, gnarly apple orchard outside of Great Barrington. As hard I have tried, I cannot actually follow the distilling process, but here are a few things I learned and retained from the tour and the tasting that followed:

* Chris is making the rum in bourbon barrels, and in a style that is traditional to New England. So it has a very bourbon-y character, but is also really well suited to warm cider (an entirely local drink!).

* He will actually be making bourbon, with local corn, soon (he is making eau de vie with his apples currently).

* We were given side by side tastings of the gin and vodka with mainstream, high end gins and vodkas. My personal favorite is the gin, which I liken to eating a bouquet of fragrant herbs and shoving a few more up your nose. We tasted this against Hendrick’s gin, which tasted like rubbing alcohol in comparison. I defy anyone to try this experiment and not come away thinking, “why, god, have gin makers been punishing me my whole life? why do they make this beautiful nectar taste like gasoline and fire?” The vodka, likewise, was full-bodied and smooth, like drinking wind, without any of that nasal-clearing harshness. I think we tasted that next to Grey Goose (spit spit. gross).

There is a list of places on their website where the stuff is for sale, both in retail establishments and in bars (it’s about $30/bottle; on par with stuff like Bombay but cheaper than Hendrick’s). We were thrilled (and later, drunk) to find it at our very favorite pub, The Independent, in Union Square, Somerville. But just check it out. Maybe it’s at *your* favorite pub.

There are a couple of lucky friends (maybe rhymes with fracheal and tirsten) who will be happy campers on Christmas morning. I feel like a holiday gift guide saying all this stuff, but it’s a nice thing to give!