Norfolk and Chesapeake will each get a craft whiskey distillery this year

Virginia is experiencing a boom time for craft liquor. But while Virginia Beach has two high-profile makers of spirits, and Portsmouth's Copper and Oak was founded last year, Norfolk and Chesapeake have mostly been left out of the party.

An earlier Norfolk distillery called Great Dismal is now closed. Dead Reckoning, which still makes rum in Norfolk, closed its tasting room in December.

Each city will now get a new whiskey-focused distillery. R.D. Wilhelm Distilling Co. in Norfolk and Deep Creek Distilling in Chesapeake plan to start making and selling liquor this year. For now, neither will have a traditional tasting room.

In Norfolk, Karl Dornemann is known as a restaurateur. He co-founded the Prime Eats restaurant group and has helped open restaurants like the Public House, Supper and Bardo.

Now, he says, he's divesting from those restaurants to open R.D. Wilhelm in Norfolk's Chelsea neighborhood, named after his father, William — the R.D. stands for "Reverend Doctor."

The distillery will eventually produce straight and rye bourbons, rum, maple-charcoal filtered vodka, and lightly aged old tom gin. The liquors will be bottled under the name Reverend Spirits. 

But bourbon is Dornemann's first love, as is clear from the shelves of the restaurants he helped found. And as R.D. Wilhelm opens, the distillery will already be able to sell 10 barrels of 3-year-old bourbon, which was contract-distilled in Florida according to Dornemann's specifications.

"I worked a little bit with Dave Pickerell, master distiller at Maker's Mark and then WhistlePig," Dornemann says.

Starting this summer, he'll be making whiskey onsite.

"I'm going to spend nearly all my time making bourbon and rye," he says. To speed up the aging process of the whiskey at first, he plans to use smaller barrels that offer more surface area in contact with the liquor. "Smaller barrels produce finished spirit much faster, and we'll do blending of micro-barrels and full barrels."

He's using malted Virginia grain and corn from Copper Fox in Williamsburg.

And slowly, he'll build up his stock of whiskey distilled in Norfolk, which must be aged in new oak for two years before it can be called straight bourbon. He'll also begin experimenting to perfect a gin recipe, but says he will move slowly to make sure it's right.

"I don't have fear of making gin. I have fear of making it bad," Dornemann says. "There's a lot of bad gin, and that's the most stress for me in terms of the formula."

But he knows how to be patient. Dornemann first secured the lease at 1120 W. Olney Road nearly three years ago — and has been grinding through local and state certification for six years.

The distillery still won't have a tasting room. Dornemann says the city of Norfolk granted him an occupancy of only three people for his 2,000-square-foot building. He was also not allowed to have outside seating.

Instead, he'll sell bottles at the distillery. The Public House on Colley Avenue, about a half-mile away, will effectively serve as Wilhelm's tasting room.

He had to divest ownership stakes in his restaurants because of so-called Tied-House laws, post-Prohibition laws that still forbid Virginia's distillery owners from also owning restaurants unless they're on the same site.

"We worked with that for a long time, trying to get an exemption," Dornemann says. "The easiest thing is that I divest from the restaurants."

In Chesapeake, meanwhile, Deep Creek Distilling will be a much smaller operation — but will also use local Virginia ingredients for its whiskeys.

"It'd be easy if we bought some whiskey from Indiana and slapped a label on it and called it ours," says co-founder Royall Ferguson. "We're gonna handcraft it, do it all from scratch the hard way. If you taste everything really good, that's what it is."

He and partner David Emmons, a retired Navy Master Chief, will move slowly, he says, using local ingredients. And they aren't in a rush to open a tasting room.

Instead, they'll start by making unaged, wheated white whiskey with grains malted by local farmers, and slowly start putting together their own distinctive take on gin used with local botanicals.

"I've been a lover of gin for a long time, and people are using local ingredients to make gins that aren't so piney and overpowering, something that's more fruity and floral. We're probably three months off from doing that now. We're going to start off slow, it won't be an overnight process."

Customers can expect to see Deep Creek spirits in ABC stores by November or December, Ferguson says. Slowly, over time, he plans to make and release aged bourbons.

For Ferguson, an insurance salesman for 28 years, Deep Creek Distilling is the culmination of a long-time dream.

"Insurance is selling a promise. But with this, it's something you can wrap your hands around, and taste and feel. I just want to make something that tastes good and that people enjoy. It's not my grandfather's recipe: We're just two guys making great product."

Matthew Korfhage, 757-446-2318, matthew.korfhage@pilotonline.com