If local sounds good to you, and you enjoy a slightly stiffer side to your drinks, check out the distilleries operating in Las Vegas. Each produces a delicious product (or products), and you’ll find them in drinks all over the valley.
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If you’re downtown at The Mob Museum, one of the coolest historical exhibits around, stop into The Speakeasy in The Underground, where you can get house-made beer and cocktails like the Moonshine Mayhem, which features pineapple, tea, cardamom and moonshine. The Distillery Exhibit in The Underground is not only a cool glimpse into 1920s Prohibition culture, it produces The Mob Museum Moonshine—Las Vegas corn whiskey, which is the moonshine used in Moonshine Mayhem. (A distillery tasting can be added on the Deluxe and Premier museum passes).
The Las Vegas Distillery in the Artisan Booze District in Henderson also showcases the history behind the company, where tours take you through the distillery with your guide explaining what’s going on in each of the shining tanks. You’ll sample different spirits at different stages, engaging your tactile and olfactory senses. Stacks and stacks of barrels await bottling on the small line before you exit to a plush tasting room to chill out, have a cocktail and enjoy some tasty eats. The distillery recently released its first gin, which you can find in the Temple of Bloom, a cocktail for two with elderflower, lemon, rosemary, cucumber and lemon plus Fever-Tree Sicilian lemonade.
And if you can’t make it to one of those, you can try another Vegas distillery’s product in cocktails all over the Strip. Nevada H&C Distillery’s Smoke Wagon Whiskey, found in the Arts District, is a spirit with a distinctive, delicious flavor. Head to Prohibition Bar 1923, where you can sip on the uncut, unfiltered bourbon alone, or include it in a flight. (Although H&C does not currently hold tours, hopes are that this year will see that happen.)
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You’ll also find other distilleries throughout the great state of Nevada. Close to Las Vegas (about an hour or so away, depending on traffic) in Pahrump is the Desert Cane Distillery, where rums are the star, all distilled with sugar cane grown on the family farm. The super-cute tasting room offers a variety of inventive, rum-based cocktails like the root beer float and daiquiris.
Farther north in the state is Frey Ranch, where the grains and corns used in the popular spirits (a recent release of its Harvester Series: 10th Anniversary Edition, 121.14 proof with whiskey as old as seven and a half years, sold out in minutes), are also grown on a family farm. On the farm in Fallon, you’ll find a sweet tasting room where 30-minute tours are offered Saturdays from noon-4 p.m. In Las Vegas, Frey Ranch is a favored spirit in many cocktails, and you can sample the bourbon in the Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian in Rockhouse’s Oak Room. This is definitely worth a few minutes, or a few hours, of your time.
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