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The interior of the vintage building that houses the distillery itself has been entirely rebuilt and its equipment replaced. Harris won’t say how much the updates cost, only that McCormick has invested $20 million in its overall business in 2015 and 2016.
The new equipment matches the old footprint, including the two cookers (otherwise known as mash tuns), where grain is combined with water and heated so the starches will break down into sugars. One cooker is for large grains like corn and other for smaller grains. Large and small are cooked separately, then combined.
“That’s the way it’s always been done here in Weston,” Harris says. “We think it makes Missouri whiskey a little different.”
The distillery has three open-top fermenters, where added yeast begins converting sugars into alcohol. Then the liquid goes into a still made by Vendome Copper & Brass Works that, like everything else, mimics the original with a vertical column (for initial distillation) and a doubler (where a second distillation takes place).