For distillery, a winning whiskey just seven years in

A small distillery in Coram has received international recognition for one of its whiskeys. Glacier Distilling earlier this year won a gold medal at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in the craft whiskey class for its North Fork Whiskey.

The blind tasting competition is one of the most highly regarded in the world.

“We’re tickled pink,” Glacier Distilling owner Nic Lee said last week.

The distillery started making whiskey and other spirits in 2010 at its facility off U.S. Highway 2. Today, it makes 22 different products, including whiskey, gin, vodka, bourbon, brandy and even absinthe.

It also recently won a gold medal at the SIP International Spirit Competition for its Fireweed bourbon, which is blended with cherry brandy.

“It’s a people pleasing whiskey,” Lee noted, because the cherry takes the bite out of the whiskey flavor.

Lee said he started brewing “in the backwoods of North Carolina” and went on to study chemistry at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He also learned from distillers in Europe, he noted.

The award-winning North Fork is a rye whiskey aged two years in 15-gallon oak barrels to create a smooth and distinct taste. The charred oak is what gives the whiskey its color and flavor. It’s aged using the Solera system, Lee noted, which is a way of transferring the spirit from one barrel to another, lower barrel over time to ensure quality and uniformity of the whiskey.

The distillery also uses regionally sourced, non-genetically modified grains in its spirits and no artificial colors or additives.

For its brandies and liqueurs, they use regionally sourced fruits. Apples and cherries come from orchards along Flathead Lake, for example. It takes five pounds of Flathead cherries to make one bottle of Fireweed. Fifteen pounds of apples go into one 375 milliliter bottle of brandy.

The distillery also makes a Hungry Horse Rum, with the iconic Morris Blake hungry horse on the bottle. A portion of rum sales benefit the Canyon Children’s Christmas Fund.

Perhaps the most unique spirit they make is Trail of the Cedars Absinthe.

“My favorite cocktail is a Sazaerac,” Lee explained.

The drink is made by chilling a glass, then rinsing it with cold absinthe, then adding chilled rye whiskey with bitters, brown sugar and a lemon twist served straight up.

It’s the sort of drink you sip in front of the fireplace on a cold winter night.

But Montana law only allows the distillery to sell what it makes — they cannot import spirits from another vendor — so Lee set about making the absinthe, which is a high alcohol spirit made of anise, fennel and wormwood. Absinsthe has a storied past — it’s been linked to artist Vincent Van Gogh’s lunacy — though the alcohol in it probably didn’t do him much good, either.

The wormwood contains thujone, which can cause hallucinations, but there’s so little in absinthe and one drinks so little to begin with, that its hallucinogenic qualities, if any, are severely diminished, Lee noted.

Lee is always coming up with new ideas for spirits and the customers have grown to appreciate it. They had a very busy summer up until the fires consumed Glacier Park and swamped the region with smoke in September. The distillery now has four full-time employees.

Lee said he’s working on another “top secret” project, but can’t reveal it just yet.

If the business’s past is any indication of the future, it will be something worth waiting for.