Category: News & Awards

Last night, Founding Spirits and Farmers & Distillers joined 600 guests and dozens of local restaurants at the 19^th annual St. Jude Gourmet Gala at the National Building Museum in downtown Washington, D.C.

Distillery Director, Jon Arroyo, and Distillery Manager, Bob VanLancker, were serving up tastes from our very own DC distillery, Founding Spirits.

Our How Jefferson Woulda Liked It was the highlight, which combines our Founding Farmers Rye Whisky and Founding Spirits American Amaro with lemon, brandied cherry, and an orange slice.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital has hosted this fundraising event at the National Building Museum for ten years running. The lively evening features restaurant and cocktail tastings from DC’s top restaurants, a rousing live auction, and a premiere silent auction. Last year’s event raised over $1.16M for the kids of St. Jude.

Located in Memphis, TN, the mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is to advance cures and means of prevention, for pediatric catastrophic diseases, including cancer, through groundbreaking research and treatment. Consistent with the vision of Founder Danny Thomas, no child is denied treatment based on race, religion, or a family’s ability to pay.

Just in time for your holiday planning, you can now order some of our spirits online! And they can be shipped directly to your door or shipped to the door of a friend, family member, or colleague just in time for the gift-giving season.

Currently, we are shipping four of our handcrafted spirits directly from our distillery, Founding Spirits in Washington, D.C.

Founding Spirits is a micro-batch distillery custom-built in the heart of our restaurant, Farmers & Distillers. Led by our dynamic duo, Jon Arroyo and Bob VanLancker, Founding Spirits is an extension of our from-scratch, source-matters mission. We are creating a growing collection of small-batch spirits distilled and blended to preserve the true flavors that come from the wheat, barley, rye, and botanicals grown on family farms across the country.

If you have yet to experience our spirits, please stop by Farmers & Distillers, or its sibling restaurants Founding Farmers or Farmers Fishers Bakers, for a taste. We have a delightful variety of craft cocktails made specifically to highlight our spirits.

When ordering online, please note that only adults 21 or older can make the order, and an adult of 21 or older needs to be present to sign for the delivery. Shipping is $8 for a single bottle, and an additional $2 for each bottle after that, but shipping is absolutely FREE for six or more bottles.

Cheers to a very spirited holiday season.

*NOTE – Spirits cannot ship to the following states: AL, DE, IL, IA, KY, ME, MI, MS, NH, NY, ND, OR, PA, SD, TX, UT, VT, VA

Last night, Founding Spirits and Farmers & Distillers joined forces with over 80 of the area’s best chefs and mixologists to raise money for DC Central Kitchen at the fourteenth annual Capital Food Fight.

Our team served “How Poor Richard Would Have Liked It,” a craft cocktail made with Founding Spirits American Whiskey and Founding Spirits American Amaro, mixed with lemon, brandied cherry, and garnished with an orange slice. We also shared our tasty Parmesan Pound Cake with Shrimp & Local Crab.

This signature fundraiser, founded by Chef José Andrés, features four local top chefs competing in a live, onstage battle hosted and judged by the biggest names in the culinary world. This year’s hosts included foodie celebrities from the Food Network’s Kitchen Sink: Spike Mendelsohn, Tregaye Fraser, and Fanny Slater. Judges included Washington National’s star player Ryan Zimmerman and political analyst Ana Navarro. The lively event brought together over 1,000 guests from across the DC metro area.

DC Central Kitchen develops and operates social ventures targeting the cycle of hunger and poverty. They provide culinary training to jobless adults, turn wasted food into balanced meals for shelters and nonprofits, expand access to healthy food, and provide healthy, scratch-cooked meals in low-income schools. All proceeds from last night’s event will benefit DC Central Kitchen.

Founding Spirits is opening to the public soon. This means there is a whole host of new craft cocktails for our restaurants, including the upcoming Farmers & Distillers.

One sip of the Suffering Candidate and our guests can easily learn what the highly anticipated Farmers & Distillers cocktail menu is all about. Our Suffering Candidate cocktail elevates the classic flavor of our Founding Farmers Rye Whisky. This third generation play on the Suffering Bastard (check out the Suffering Georgetowner at our sister restaurant, Farmers Fishers Bakers) highlights how our ingenious Distillery Director, Jon Arroyo, offers a nod to the rich history of cocktails while maintaining the true character of our spirits in a fun, relevant way.

Home to our Founding Spirits distillery, our Farmers & Distillers bar menu showcases our handcrafted spirits we are making in house.

Learn more and keep up to date on the goings on at Farmers & Distillers by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.