Hillrock Estate Distillery
Hillrock Estate Distillery in Ancram features a solera room where three tiers of barrels age whiskey by hand, with Berkshire views from the porch.
Hillrock Estate Distillery sits on a hilltop in Ancram, and on a clear day you can see the Berkshires from the tasting room porch. Jeffrey Baker and his wife Cathy Franklin planted the barley here, and Hillrock became the first distillery since Prohibition to both grow its own grain and malt it on site. The floor-malting room is still part of every tour, and the smell of germinating barley is the first thing you notice walking in.
Master distiller David Pickerell, who built the whiskey program from Hillrock's earliest days after leaving Maker's Mark, died in 2018, but the solera system he and Baker developed is still how the whiskey ages: three tiers of barrels, older spirit blended down into younger stock by hand instead of one cask aging start to finish.
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