Sagamore Spirit Distillery, Keeping Maryland 'Wet' A Century After Prohibition

I always thought that historical whiskey tourism would only take me to Kentucky, as it did in 2006 when I attended the Kentucky Bourbon Festival.

Since that time, Prohibition-era laws have changed and tax breaks have been enacted, so now there are a ton of new distilleries—whiskey and otherwise—throughout the country.

But if you were to trace the origins of American whiskey, you'd have to go beyond Kentucky or even Tennessee, where Jack Daniels was founded in 1875.

No, you'd also have to go to Maryland, too.



The Mid-Atlantic state has a rich history in not bourbon but rye whiskey. Its whiskey-making dates back to the colonial era, when distillers in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Maryland blazed a brown liquor trail that hit a fire break: Prohibition.



Nearly every state ratified the Volstead Act (a.k.a. the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution)—some even "going dry" before it was officially enacted on a federal level in 1920, and some continuing to stay dry even after Prohibition was repealed via the 21st Amendment.



The one exception was Rhode Island, the only state to refuse to ratify the amendment. But at the time, Maryland government officials and their constituents were so staunchly against the temperance movement that they simply refused to enforce it—one of the reasons why we still call Maryland "The Free State."



But even when and where it's been legal, local distilling has experienced its ups and downs—and it's only recently that there's been enough renewed interest in the non-corporate, craft, locovore summoning of spirits to really make a go of it.



Hence Sagamore Spirits Distillery, located in the Port Covington harbor area of South Baltimore (more on its location in a second). It's not exactly not corporate—its owner is the billionaire CEO of the company Under Armour, whose global headquarters is right next door.



But having only opened a year and a half ago (though starting to barrel-age some rye a couple years before that), it's still a new entry into the so-called "whiskey wars"—though it's become a juggernaut, already brewing up huge batches in gigantic tanks housed on a sprawling campus.



While other upstart distillers use after-market equipment to save some cash, Sagamore commissioned nearly everything to be custom-made and branded with its logo—most notably, the ginormous, 40-foot column still by Vendome.



Through various stages of quality control, condensers and doublers and whatnot, Sagamore triple distills two different mash bills—one of mostly rye with some corn and a little malted barley, and the other of nearly all rye and a little malted barley—which end up in two different charred American virgin oak barrels to be aged separately.



They then put the barrels in storage for about four years (double what most distillers will bother with), where they don't control the climate. In fact, they need the fluctuations in temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure to expand and contract the barrels. That will force the clear spirit up against and into the charred wood and back out again, drawing that amber color out with it.



Once the rye whiskey is bottled on the assembly line, it's still hand-labelled and initialed.



Besides the historical videos and other displays in the gift shop (which of course sells Sagamore-branded wares by Under Armour), there's also the neighboring Rye Street Tavern for elevated pub fare and whiskey cocktails (operated by a NYC-based hospitality group).



But to taste the product—including the limestone-filtered spring water sourced from an aquifer 20 miles north—you've got to do the distillery tour and tasting.



You start with the white rye, an unaged whiskey that's akin to moonshine (a.k.a. "white lightning" or "White Dog," or the higher wine that comes out of the triple distilling process). This one is so mellow that you can mix it or drink it straight out of the bottle. Next are the 83 proof and the boozier Cask Strength (at around 110+ proof, it varies).



And, as at all the great whiskey distilleries, you get to finish it off with a bourbon-infused truffle. (At the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, two meals a day consisted entirely of bourbon balls.)

Right now, Sagamore Spirit feels like it's hiding in plain sight—situated on the industrial waterfront of the middle branch of the Patapsco River at an abandoned railyard.

But given its proximity to Interstate 95 and the post-industrial chic of the Inner Harbor area that's thriving just across the way, its founder would like to see the area developed.

Think self-driving water taxis and mixed-used developments, high-rises, and utopian amenities.

And the trains would come back to this former railroad hub, too—by extending the existing lightrail lines that already run nearby.

Some Baltimoreans, of course, are in an uproar. People don't like change.

But are changes like this inevitable? I've already witnessed it at the Red Hook, Navy Yard, Williamsburg, Long Island City, and Astoria industrial waterfronts of New York City. It's happening right now at Gowanus in Brooklyn and Ports O'Call in the LA Harbor.

I'm sure Terminal Island is next.

I refuse to worry about it. Whenever I go to "the wettest state in the union" (about once a year), I'm just going to take some time to stop and sip the whiskey.

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Photo Essay: America's First Black History Wax Museum

Sure, you could cozy up to a wax figure of Barack Obama at Madame Tussaud's in New York City, San Francisco, or Washington, DC, but the best place to see our former president in wax is at the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore.



It's not that it's the best likeness of #44 there is—but this wax museum, the first of its kind in the country when it was founded in 1983, is way beyond anything that those "major" tourist attractions have to offer.



You see, the story of the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum actually goes back more than 5000 years to ancient Egypt (then known as Kemet)—which is when and where the tradition of memorializing important figures in statue form began (usually bronze, gold, and copper). And so the collection of this wax museum also starts then and there with Imhotep, the presumed architect of the Egyptian pyramids.



Inside this 10,000-square-foot former firehouse, Ethiopia is represented with a depiction of the Queen of Sheba, Makeda; Mali has its place with the builder of Timbuktu, Askia the Great.



Then South Africa circa the late 18th and early 19th centuries gets its due with Chaka Zulu.



It's critical to start the narrative there, not only for its own historical significance. Perhaps more importantly, it provides a stark contrast with the next chapter of the story, with later Africans being exported as goods, sold off at auction, and lynched.



The museum unapologetically portrays the plight of the African slave, who was often forced to dance even while shackled, who was force-fed...



...and who suffered such inconceivable indignities.



Therefore, the slave ship section of the museum is a horror show—but in order for it to be truthful, it has to be.



Of course, children weren't exempt from the inhumane treatment—and therefore they're not left out of the museum, either.



Particularly disturbing is the story of a pygmy boy named Otabenga (not the little guy pictured above), who was captured in his native Congo and brought to the U.S. for the 1904 World's Fair, eventually ending up on display as a "race specimen" at the Bronx Zoo. Just over 10 years later, despite being granted his freedom, he killed himself.



And while you can't tell the story of freeing the slaves without mentioning the Underground Railroad and its lead "conductor," Harriet Tubman (whose wax figure was one of the museum's first)...



...or Dred Scott, who tried to sue for his freedom...



...there was also the lesser-known but no less intriguing Henry "Box" Brown, the master escape artist who shipped himself in a box to Philly to escape slavery.



But when the Emancipation Proclamation finally came about in 1863, the resulting abolition of slavery came up short in terms of ensuring the wellbeing of the freed slaves.



As no one would hire them at a fair wage, they ended up essentially in a different form of slavery, known as sharecropping.



And because they could claim no ownership of the land, black sharecroppers were relegated to the lowest economic rung and struggled to survive.



Some freed slaves moves out West for a better opportunity—so many, in fact, that the West has more all-black towns (mostly found between 1840 and 1890) than any other region in the country.



Some settled into leadership roles earlier than others...



...founding schools...



...churches...



...and fraternal orders.



Thankfully, the museum equally celebrates unsung heroes of black history, like A. Phillip Randolph and the pioneering Pullman porters...



...as well as local Baltimore heroes and heroines like Mary Carter Smith...



...Thelma Banks-Cox...



...Bishop Reverend John R. Bryant of Baltimore's African Methodist Church...



...and Freeman Hrabowski, president of The University of Maryland, Baltimore County since 1992.



There are the military leaders, like Tuskegee Airman General Daniel "Chappie" James, Jr....



...artists like James Hubert "Eubie" Blake, an accomplished jazz musician and composer...



...the black literati, like poets Phillis Wheatley and Langston Hughes and novelists and essayists Richard Wright and James Baldwin...



...and broadcasters like "Aunt" Pauline Wells Lewis, who spent a half-century bringing gospel music to the masses via her radio show (and paved the way for singers like Mahalia Jackson, who's also been immortalized in wax at the museum).



In fact, many of the Civil Rights leaders of the time used their art to spread their message, perhaps through songs like "Lift Every Voice and Sing," written by James Weldon Johnson.



Others protested through their actions.



Of course, you might expect to find a wax statue of Rosa Parks at this museum, given her own groundbreaking act of defiance, but you'll also find a depiction of the well-honored and awarded NAACP executive Mildred Bond Roxborough.



The nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization, the NAACP is also represented in the museum by statues of Earl Theodore Shinhoster, Whitney M. Young, Jr., and Kweisi Mfume.



Meanwhile, William Hartley Hayling, MD (whose statue is one of the more recent additions to the museum) founded the 100 Black Men of America...



...and Mary McLeod Bethune, a former sharecropper, went on to found the National Council of Negro Women.



Of course, among the freedom fighters were also the prize fighters—as well as other star athletes—like Joe Lewis, Jackie Robinson, and Jesse Owens.



But the "greatness" of these blacks in wax isn't always quite so clear-cut—as in the case of Haile Selassi, former emperor of Ethiopia, who the Rastafari of Jamaica worship as the second coming of God (or, the Messiah) but whose infringements against human rights have drawn wide criticism.

We hear those more complicated stories less often than those of, say, George Washington Carver, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, or Nelson Mandela (all of whom have been recreated in wax for this museum as well).

But none of the pieces of black history—whether slavery or apartheid, segregation or Black Power—can really exist on its own in a vacuum. Each person and each era is so intricately tied to all of the rest.

Then again, you can't really convey 4000 years' worth of humanity in just one museum (or only in wax)—no matter how well it's been curated and how good the dioramas are.

And that means that there are a lot of prominent figures that are missing from it (though many athletes and entertainers were intentionally omitted, under the assumption that people already know who they are and what they've contributed).

But the collection continues to grow, so hopefully more locals and visitors alike will be compelled to venture over to North Avenue on the east side of town, an area that may seem unsavory to some (including my Uber driver) but is definitely "in transition," and for the better.

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