Date Night to Watershed Distillery

I've been MIA the past few days because I had a virus on my laptop but luckily, Todd knows how to fix this stuff so I think I'm all good now. I probably would've just gone out and bought a new laptop so I'm glad I married him.

Todd bought a Groupon awhile back for a tour & tasting at Watershed Distillery, a local vodka & gin distillery. It was going to expire soon so we headed there on Wednesday evening for a date night. If there is anything Todd loves doing more than sleeping and watching bad movies, it's going to a brewery or distillery for a tour & tasting so this was right up his alley. Me, not so much, but I'll pretty much tag along for anything and I knew he was excited so it made me excited. Plus, we were going out to dinner afterwards so that's another reason to go.

Watershed Distillery only started making alcohol last October so I knew their facility would be fairly small but I was really impressed after taking the tour and talking to one of the owners that their vodka & gin has already won national awards (for the alcohol and the label on the bottle) and is sold at most bars & liquor stores in Columbus. They also have it around the state and are now branching out to parts of Kentucky and New Orleans. What makes it more impressive is that they only have 2 full-time guys making this stuff and one part-timer.

Front door of Watershed

Bottles of their gin & vodka

We were given a tour of the place, learned about the process of making gin & vodka, and ended with a tasting of both. Todd was excited to find out that they are also in the process of making bourbon, which will be a 2 year process and be ready at the end of 2013.

The stills used to make the alcohol....this makes about 60 gallons

The 8 spices used to make their gin unique

The bourbon barrels

Todd sampling some vodka

We even got t-shirts with the tour!

Following our distillery tour, we ate dinner at Z Cucina in Grandview. This is a local Italian restaurant that we had never been to before but we will definitely be back. Not only was the food outstanding (Todd had a prosciutto & goat cheese pizza while I had gnocchi), but the owner was the one who seated us, was super friendly, and checked on us several times including filling our water glasses.

Z Cucina