Beads, Grain and Women Who Whisky

Are we already half way through March?!

We ended February on a positive note, closing it out with our Mardi Gras Party! I wasn’t anticipating a huge turn out, but was pleasantly surprised with how many people are really into Mardi Gras! As usual, we submersed ourselves into the theme and had New Orleans style cocktails. One of which was my favorite, the Ramos Gin Fizz.

The picture of the Ramos Fizz is beautiful, but the process of making it is even more gorgeous. When you add the soda to it, it really comes to life!

We also had James, from the Daily Grind Cafe in York, impress us yet again with his food offerings. He made a delicious jambalaya and crab cakes. I’m not a huge fan of seafood at all, but I had a couple of the crab cakes and was impressed.

The Daily Grind has prepared food for us in the past for other events and James has always come through! You can check out their website and offerings here.

We had almost all of the Wiggly Crew in attendance for the party and I’m happy to report all participated in costume. With a little bit of nudging for Brian 😉 If you don’t know me, I really love to get into these things. Tell me to dress up and I will DRESS UP.

I sometimes have to strong arm David to participate in costume, but he usually doesn’t disappoint me 🙂 I have to take all the pictures I can to capture him while he’s dressed. Usually after about an hour he takes it off and goes about his business. As you can see below, father and son, have decided to forego the costumes and take a minute to play some Wiggly cribbage. Any guesses as to who won?

In between these events I usually have to do the not so fun stuff, but even then I look forward to my working days because I really enjoy it. I feel like I’m a huge part of growing something incredible and unique. Sometimes in between paperwork and emails, I get to have some fun while getting work done. Like be a photographer for a day!

Don’t mind my goofy face (I know you’ll look at it, but I promise that’s not how I always look HAHA) but I couldn’t help but use this picture because the drink is literally glowing in my hand! We save a lot of money by doing things around the distillery ourselves and one of those is photographs! I’ve researched and learned a lot about photography and take any opportunity I can to snap some pictures of our incredible hand crafted cocktails. We’ve had some great photographers come over in the past and a do a few shots for us, but I like to do what I can. Plus I get to try some of our newest concoctions!

During certain parts of the day the lighting in the barn is incredible for pictures. I’m starting to develop quite the arsenal of photographic gems!

When there isn’t an evening Wiggly event and the kids are taken care of I am able to go to our York Chamber of Commerce Business After Hours Events!

We do monthly Business After Hours events that I find to be really helpful in sharing my love for all things Wiggly. Here I am at the Cliff House with a few of my fellow board members of the chamber. Some of these people have become really good friends and I’m thankful for the opportunity to meet new people and spread more and more Wiggly love.

We’ve had a good past few weeks, but the highlight was probably when we went to Blue Ox Malthouse just last week!

{Shout out to my mother-in-law Judy who really is a huge part in a lot of these events because she watches our precious munchkins while we do our thang.}

I’m going to be doing a more formal and technical blog for the distillery about our experience, but that’ll be next week when I get pictures back from their social media person and do a bit more of my own research. For now, this is a quick overview of what we did!

Drum Roll…..Wiggly Bridge Distillery is going to produce a Single Malt Whisky! We went up to Lisbon Falls, Maine to learn about the process of craft malting at Blue Ox Malthouse. They support Maine agriculture and supply it to the Maine craft beverage industry.

The whole process is the epitome of Maine, craft, and local. We love it!

When we arrived our grain was in the floor malting phase where they have to turn over the malt with their handy dandy malt rake every 4-5 hours. Get this, even through the night!

I didn’t realize that we would actually be doing work, so arrived in heels. Nevertheless, I put on my booties and went for it. It was, surprisingly, FREEZING in the malt house so I welcomed the opportunity to get my heart pumping and blood flowing!

It wasn’t as easy as I made it look 😀 It felt so bizarre walking through it. Almost like walking through a wet, soggy, squishy, slushy, bean bag. It was an experience!

Somewhere in between everything, my girl Ashleigh and I went down to Massachusetts to participate in a Women Who Whiskey event! It was in a speakeasy called Less Than Greater Than. We even had to use the password “Giggle Water” to get in. I was in my element! I’m sure you know by now that we dressed up and we weren’t the only ones! We had an incredible time at the event making cocktails and meeting new people. We were able to officially meet Cheryl who put the event on and is a Wiggly fan herself! Thanks Cheryl!

Well, I now need to get back to the not so fun stuff and get some boxes checked off my to-do list!

In April we have something going on every week of the month so I’m sure I’ll have another update in no time!

Cheers!

Amanda