Sightseeing—and maybe a sip

FREDERICKSBURG The sweet bouquet of aging bourbon greets you like an old friend when you walk into the warehouse at A. Smith Bowman Distillery.

"I never get tired of smelling it," said Joe Dangler, Bowman's master distiller who has been on the job for more than 30 years.

Soon, you'll be able to smell it, too.

Bowman, whose best-known brand is Virginia Gentleman, is renovating the distillery to make it tourist-friendly. Plans call for a visitors center, museum and theater -- even a veranda and a boardwalk around a picturesque lake. Unlike wineries that often have tasting rooms, however, laws prohibit distilleries from offering samples to visitors.

Dangler hopes the first phase of the renovation is completed within the next year, so Bowman can begin tapping into the region's tourism business.

That business features Civil War battlefields and the National Museum of the Marine Corps in nearby Quantico, and it is influenced by Washington to the north and Richmond to the south. He also hopes Bowman will become an official stop on the history-rich American Whiskey Trail.

Bowman Distillery dates to 1935, when members of the Bowman family began making bourbon on their Northern Virginia farm after the end of Prohibition. The family's vast property, Sunset Hills Farm, was eventually sold, with most of the land becoming modern-day Reston.

Crowded by development, the distillery was moved in 1988 to a vacant cellophane factory just south of downtown Fredericksburg. Since then, part of the campuslike manufacturing complex has been converted into an industrial and business park, Bowman Center. The distillery was sold in 2003 to Sazerac Company Inc., a New Orleans spirits operation.

No corn or other grains come through the Bowman plant any longer. The grain-mashing and fermentation are conducted at Bowman's parent plant, Buffalo Trace Distillery in Kentucky, the state where the vast majority of bourbons are produced. But these bourbons leave the Bluegrass State before they become bourbon.

Tankers transport the clear liquid to Fredericksburg, where it's run through a 3,000-gallon copper pot still for the final steps of the distillation process and then stored in charred oak barrels for aging. That's where the distilled spirits become bourbon, developing its flavor and amber color.

In the Bowman warehouse, 6,000 barrels stacked upright on pallets contain bourbon that has been aging from a few months to more than 10 years.

Dangler refers to them as "my children."

In his job, Dangler keeps constant check on the bourbon, eyeballing the color, placing the tiniest of drops on his tongue or pouring some on his hands, rubbing them together to create just enough heat and then drawing in a long, instructive breath to make sure it smells just right.

It's good work if you can get it.

"People say, 'You have a great job, you can get drunk all day,'" Dangler said with a chuckle. "Can't do that."

Asked how one becomes a master distiller, Dangler laughed and said, "Just time."

It's a lot of on-the-job training. In recent years, he has also helped revive George Washington's distillery near Mount Vernon. Using 18th-century techniques that included a wood fire, Dangler in 2006 helped bottle the first batch of Washington's rye whiskey on the site in more than 200 years.

"That was a lot of fun," he said.

Bowman has repositioned itself in the marketplace, focusing more on specialized, handcrafted brands, including Virginia Gentleman 90-Proof Small Batch Bourbon, a premium bourbon that has won several double-gold medals, including this year, at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Both Virginia Gentleman labels are distilled, aged and bottled in Fredericksburg.
Contact Bill Lohmann at (804) 649-6639 or .