KOVAL DISTILLERY

Last week I took a tour of KOVAL, Chicago's first distillery since the 1800s, and I learned a thing or two about spirits from the tour guide, Oopey:

-George Washington operated one of the nation's largest distilleries at Mount Vernon. Also, his leveraging of tax on whiskey nearly sparked the nation's first Civil War, the Whiskey Rebellion.

-The women's temperance movement began just outside Chicago in Evanston, Illinois.

-During Prohibition, you could still buy alcohol at Walgreens with a prescription—one of the reasons there are so many Walgreens stores today.

-The insides of whiskey barrels are lit on fire because charcoal works as a natural filter.

-Gin is more or less vodka infused with botanicals (which explains why I find it so easy to drink).

Aside from the nifty facts, I liked tasting the differences between the various organic millet, oat, and rye whiskeys that KOVAL produces (though my absolute favorite was their ginger liqueur). The distillery has been named one of the 10 most influential craft whiskey makers, so it's certainly worth a trip to their research and development facility in Ravenswood to sip and swizzle.