It's owned and run by a husband and wife, Ben Lyon and Jaime Windon, who as far as I can tell are the only employees. Right now all they make is rum. The base distillate is made in 26 gallon pot stills from a 50/50 wash of organic molasses and Florida Crystals cane sugar. The first run is a stripping run, then a second run to make the cut. It's then sold in three varieties, all at 90 proof: a white, nothing put the plain distillate diluted; a "dark," which is the white with added caramel (note, it is not made with industry-sourced E150A, but is rather made in the distillery from melted down the Florida Crystals sugar); finally, they make an aged version of the base distillate, aged for, if I remember right, 3 months in 3 gallon used bourbon barrels from Yellow Rose distillery in Texas.
I tasted all three.
The white is really something - there are strong pot-still molasses notes as well as the reedy, grassy notes from the cane sugar. It reminded me most of a mix of a white agricole (Barbancourt, Dillon, etc), and a pot-stilled Jamaican rum without any of the dunder or hogo notes, since they don't use dunder pits. It's definitely one of the best just-off-the-still whites I've had - no filtering, no anything, just water and into bottles it goes.
The dark is what you would expect if you added some caramel that wasn't as intensely concentrated as E150 to said white rum. Jaime said there were 2 oz per bottle, but that seems extremely high. I forgot to ask Ben when he gave me a private tour, but having tasted it, I highly doubt it's 2 oz per bottle. In any case. It tastes like the white but sweeter and with the raw agricole-y elements toned down. Pass.
The aged was really interesting. I was interested to see how a few months in a 3 gallon barrel would turn out, and the result was pleasantly surprising. It was not "over-woody", tannic, or anything of the sort, but well balanced, rounder, and a pale amber - not the equivalent of a 8-12 years or anything, but certainly comparable to a few years' aging in standard barrels.
Apart from the caramel in the dark rum, all 3 are completely unaltered. When I asked Ben about that, he mentioned that he's very much into purity. (I recommended he learn more about Richard Seale and Foursquare!) Ben also has an experimental rum in the works - a gallon or so of the base white rum aging in a glass jar with various oak chips - bourbon oak, limousin oak, and I can't remember what else. It wasn't available for tasting, but Ben said it reminded him a lot of Ron del Barrilito (leading us to agree that if RdB can turn ultra-industrial Bacardi bulk distillate into a fine rum, imagine the potential for doing that with a high-quality base spirit).
There's only one big downside to the Lyon rums, and that's their price. The white is $33, the dark is $39...and the aged is $99. The distillery is TINY - they only operate 3 small pot stills, and seem to be running more or less at capacity. Until this past weekend all sales were through their distillery tasting room - this weekend they started distribution, with a local restaurant in St Michaels beginning to carry their products. As for the aged, as of this past weekend they just untapped their third batch of it, and it's in precious short supply compared to the white and dark. I don't know if that justifies $99 though. In any case, I thought the white was a pretty good product and bought a bottle - happy to support a semi-local enterprise operating with integrity and making a decent spirit!
They're already talking about expansion, and I really hope they're able to pull it off. Ben told me his goal is to produce artisanal rum at a really large scale, all in pot stills. It sounds like the next step forward won't be quite as dramatic as that, but still, it's good to have them on the scene. Hopefully sooner rather than later they can get national distribution and some fellows here can try some.
(https://www.facebook.com/LyonDistilling - no real website, just that. Also if you google them, they've had a lot of attention in the local press, including the Washington Post)
