The Deerslayer: Tamworth Distilling's Venison Whiskey Is the Most Audacious Bottle to Come Out of New England
There is a well-worn tradition in American whiskey of pushing against convention — of daring the drinker to reconsider what a spirit can be. Rye mash bills, barrel finishing, cask strength releases, and even the recent wave of flavored whiskeys have each stretched the category in their own way. But a small distillery tucked into the White Mountains of New Hampshire has done something that makes all of those innovations feel almost timid by comparison. Tamworth Distilling has put venison in its whiskey — actual, hand-chopped, slow-smoked deer meat — and sold it at 99 proof in a $65 bottle to anyone willing to take the plunge. The result is called The Deerslayer, and it may be the single most original flavored whiskey ever produced on American soil.
A Distillery Built on Provocation and Place
Tamworth Distilling is a small-batch distillery in Tamworth, New Hampshire, founded in 2015 by Steven Grasse, a student of transcendentalism who grew up summering in New Hampshire. That biographical detail matters more than it might first appear. The transcendentalist tradition — rooted in the writings of Emerson and Thoreau and deeply tied to New England's natural landscape — is essentially the distillery's operating philosophy. Everything at Tamworth is meant to spring from the land around it, to taste like the place it came from, and to tell a story that no spreadsheet-driven beverage company could ever conceive.
Grasse, who had previously developed brands like Hendrick's Gin and Sailor Jerry Rum, came up with the concept for the distillery after discussions with whiskey enthusiast Jamie Oakes and Matt Powers. Tamworth Distilling was intended to revitalize the town of Tamworth — which Grasse described as the most idyllic place possible — by employing local farmers and attracting young people. That civic mission is woven into the distillery's DNA, and it gives an operation that might otherwise look like pure shock-value provocation a genuine, rooted purpose.
Grasse is the founder of Quaker City Mercantile, a distiller, marketer, and distributor that's the force behind Hendrick's Gin, Sailor Jerry Rum, Art in the Age Spirits, and Lo-Fi Aperitifs. He launched Tamworth Distillery in New Hampshire's White Mountains — an endeavor inspired by the nineteenth-century Transcendentalists of New England — drawing on local resources and serving as the parent company's test kitchen slash lab. That last phrase is key. Tamworth is not simply a commercial distillery releasing limited editions for buzz. It operates more like a research laboratory with a bar attached, one where the rules of spirits production are treated as suggestions rather than commandments.
Tamworth's distiller and resident biochemist Matt Power has access to more lab equipment than much larger operations, often used to concoct spirits that are eclectic, left-of-center, and to the casual observer, just plain bizarre. But it's not purely for shock value. "The goal is to explore and have fun," Grasse says. "Tell great stories, excite the senses and boldly go where no one has gone before."
The Inspiration: James Fenimore Cooper Meets Hunting Season
The Deerslayer was set in motion after Tamworth owner Steven Grasse was inspired by James Fenimore Cooper's novel, "The Deerslayer," making it a whiskey flavored with the flora and fauna of New Hampshire. Cooper's 1841 frontier novel follows Natty Bumppo, a frontiersman and skilled hunter navigating the wilderness of upstate New York. It's a book about a man who lives off the land — who understands its rhythms, its dangers, and its bounty — and it is not difficult to see how Grasse, walking his White Mountains property in the peak of New Hampshire's fall foliage season, would connect the novel's themes to a bottle of whiskey meant to bottle that very landscape.
The timing of the release is no accident, either. The nation is well into deer hunting season by the time the bottle hits shelves, making a venison-flavored whiskey not merely a curiosity but an almost seasonally logical proposition. For the millions of American hunters who spend autumn mornings in tree stands and field blinds across the country, the idea of a whiskey that tastes of the quarry they're pursuing is something between a novelty and a statement of identity. Tamworth made the bottle for those men, even if the broader market couldn't help but pay attention too.
How You Actually Make a Whiskey Taste Like Deer
The production process behind The Deerslayer is where the story gets genuinely technical, and genuinely strange. The team starts with an aged white wheat whiskey that has been rested for three years in standard 53-gallon barrels. That three-year wheat whiskey base is a deliberate choice — a lighter-bodied whiskey backbone that allows the truly unique flavoring to shine through. Had Tamworth used a heavily charred, high-rye bourbon, the robust grain and oak character would have overpowered the savory elements they were trying to introduce. The wheat whiskey acts more like a canvas than a statement.
Sourced from Bonnie Brae Farms in Plymouth, hand-chopped red deer venison is tossed with cranberries, porcini mushrooms, juniper berries, and green peppercorns. Every one of those supporting ingredients was chosen with care. The cranberries bring a tart, fruity acidity that acts as a counterweight to the meat's richness. The porcini mushrooms add an earthy umami depth that amplifies the venison rather than competing with it. Juniper berries contribute a faintly resinous, piney quality that evokes the boreal forest where New Hampshire's deer actually live. And the green peppercorns provide sharp, aromatic heat that keeps the entire composition from becoming too dense or heavy on the palate.
Fellow distiller Matt Power, a trained organic chemist and accomplished organic pig farmer, fermented the meat with a sausage culture and smoked it heavily. As Oakes explains, when you distill something, a lot of the heavier flavors are left behind, so getting them to cross over into the spirit can be troublesome. But the meat is there and present since it's heavily smoked. The porcini mushrooms, juniper, peppercorn, and cranberry all add more of a backbone.
The decision to ferment the venison mixture overnight before smoking it is one of the most technically interesting choices in the whole process. After fermenting overnight to accentuate the meat's delectable gaminess, it is then slow-smoked over a mix of seasoned branches from New Hampshire's boreal forests. The fermentation step serves a crucial function: it breaks down proteins and develops lactic acids, deepening the meaty, funky character of the venison in the same way fermentation intensifies the complexity of charcuterie or aged cheese. By the time the smoking begins, the venison has been chemically transformed into something richer and more volatile — more capable of transferring its aromatic signature into the spirit.
The Rotary Evaporator: Pharmaceutical Tech in a Whiskey Distillery
Final distillation takes place in a rotary evaporator, which is more commonly seen in pharmaceutical laboratories, but is perfect for pulling aromatics. This is the piece of technology that separates Tamworth's methodology from nearly every other flavored whiskey on the American market. Most producers simply add flavor compounds — natural or artificial — to a finished spirit. Others use the older maceration-and-redistillation approach. Tamworth is doing something far more precise.
Tamworth uses a medical-grade rotary evaporator — an incredible piece of chemistry equipment that allows them to extract flavors from fresh ingredients using a cold vacuum seal, keeping them as fresh as the day they were picked. Each ingredient can then be precisely blended and infused into a spirit at just the right ratio, for unmatched levels of control over the finished flavor profile.
Matt Power himself has described exactly what this technique achieves in the context of the Deerslayer. "We're able to infuse it separately...bring the distillation through a large swatch of alcohol and down into the steam realm, which brings over quite a bit of non-traditional savory aromatics, almost what I would call minerality," Power explains. That word — minerality — is borrowed from the vocabulary of wine tasting, and its appearance here is telling. Power is not trying to make a meat-flavored novelty shot. He is attempting to capture something more elusive: the terroir of a New Hampshire autumn, expressed through the steam physics of a laboratory-grade still.
The Pechuga Comparison — and Why It Only Goes So Far
While it may lend comparisons to pechuga mezcal — which is redistilled with fruits, grains, spices, and nuts and a raw chicken or turkey breast hanging over the still so its vapors can lend flavor — Tamworth's whiskey is made in a rotary evaporator. Pechuga mezcal, produced in Oaxaca and certain other Mexican states, is perhaps the world's most famous precedent for distilling spirits with animal protein. The technique dates back centuries and is traditionally reserved for festivals and celebrations, with the hanging breast acting as a kind of flavor filter through which the spirit's vapors pass. The comparison to Deerslayer is instructive but imperfect — the rotary evaporator gives Power far more precise control over temperature and extraction than the open-still pechuga method allows, and the venison is integrated into the fermentation and smoking process rather than simply suspended over the distillate.
There is also the matter of a road not taken. Initially, the team wanted to include actual deer's blood, but USDA regulations required that it come from one of their approved slaughterhouses, which didn't seem to exist. That detail is simultaneously absurd and illuminating. It reveals just how seriously Tamworth was taking the conceit — and how thoroughly the regulatory architecture of American food safety had not anticipated someone trying to distill blood into whiskey. The omission of blood ultimately forced the team toward the fermented-and-smoked meat approach, which by all accounts delivers a more nuanced and transferable flavor anyway.
What Does It Actually Taste Like?
"It tastes like you'd imagine — like venison," says Oakes. "It's got a few supporting role characters that are helpful as far as flavoring." That's an admirably honest tasting note from the man who helped make it. He is not overselling a delicate whisper of deer or underselling a full broadside of gaminess. The Deerslayer tastes like venison because that was the goal, and the team achieved it.
More formally, savory and smoky notes characterize this one-of-a-kind spirit, with a subtle spice on the palate and a lingering finish. The smokiness comes from those boreal forest branches used in the slow-smoke process — not the artificial liquid smoke that lesser producers might reach for, but actual regional wood that carries its own aromatic identity. The spice is the green peppercorn asserting itself mid-palate, cutting through the savory fat of the venison. And the finish, described as lingering, is what separates this from a stunt. A stunt ends quickly. A well-made spirit hangs on the palate, revealing itself over time.
As Grasse has put it, "the gaminess of the venison lends itself as a savory complement to the sweetness of the wheat whiskey, creating a truly creative carnivorous concoction." That pairing of savory and sweet is not unfamiliar to anyone who has ever enjoyed a venison roast with cranberry sauce or a braised short rib finished with a splash of bourbon — the interplay between meat's umami depth and a spirit's grain-derived sweetness is a proven one. Tamworth is simply collapsing the two into a single glass.
How to Drink It
Tamworth's own team has a clear preference for how the Deerslayer is best experienced. "Usually neat," says Oakes. "You could definitely use the Deerslayer in a spirit-centric drink like a Manhattan or an old fashioned, but with most House of Tamworth spirits — Castoreum and Corpse Flower — they're best expressed on their own in a snifter as you would a regular dram of whiskey." That recommendation makes technical sense. Diluting the spirit with vermouth, ice, or bitters risks muffling the very specific and hard-won flavor compounds that Power extracted through his rotary evaporator. A heavy crystal snifter, a small pour, no ice — that is the right environment for a whiskey built on this level of precision.
It also bears noting that 99 proof is not a timid bottling strength. At just shy of 50% ABV, the Deerslayer has enough ethanol to carry those volatile savory aromatics to the nose without the spirit becoming hot or aggressive. It lands in the sweet spot — assertive without being punishing.
The House of Tamworth: A Pattern of Intelligent Madness
The Deerslayer does not exist in isolation. It is part of a growing portfolio of intentionally provocative releases that Tamworth has grouped under the banner of the House of Tamworth — an experimental sub-line designed to push the boundaries of what distilled spirits can be. Tamworth Distilling and Mercantile has previously sold whiskey flavored with unusual items like maple syrup tapped from trees growing in graveyards and beaver castoreum.
Tamworth is also known for a bourbon whiskey that "proudly features an old-world flavoring technique that uses the oil extract from the castor gland of the North American beaver." This odd concoction, known as Eau De Musc, is also currently available for sale through the distillery for $65. Castoreum — the secretion from beaver castor glands — has a long history as a flavoring agent in perfumery and, historically, in food production. Tamworth's decision to put it in bourbon was the kind of move that generated breathless headlines while also representing a genuine piece of culinary history being revived in a modern context.
Steven Grasse and Tamworth Distilling, the makers behind Eau De Musc and The Deerslayer Whiskey, are known for pushing boundaries with bold choices of flavor and historically influenced local ingredients — a spirit lineup that also includes Bird of Courage, a roasted turkey flavored whiskey, just in time for the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving. In 2022, Tamworth produced Crab Trapper, a bourbon distilled with invasive green crabs. The pattern is consistent: every release is anchored in a specific place, a specific season, and a specific story. None of them feel arbitrary, even the ones that initially seem to be designed purely for shock.
Since 2015, Tamworth Distilling has grown every year, launched wild and award-winning innovations, and received acclaim from The New York Times, Forbes, Food & Wine, Esquire, Wine Enthusiast, and more. That media footprint is not accidental — as an advertising executive, Steven Grasse was known to detonate buzz-generating pranks he refers to as "creative grenades." But the difference between a creative grenade and a stunt is whether the substance holds up once the smoke clears. With the Deerslayer, it does.
The Man Behind the Curtain: Steven Grasse and His Brand Philosophy
Steven Grasse came up with these seasonal whiskeys, and you might know him as the boundary-pushing spirit behind Hendrick's Gin and the revitalization of Narragansett. Both of those brands share a common thread with Tamworth: they succeeded not by competing on price or on conventional flavor profiles, but by building a world around the product. Hendrick's positioned itself as a gin for the eccentric aristocrat; Narragansett was revived as a working-class New England icon. Tamworth is something else again — a distillery that positions itself as an act of natural philosophy, a place where science, history, and wilderness converge in a bottle.
Grasse was called the "punk rock prince of small-batch spirits" by journalist Alex Halberstadt. On March 14, 2023, Grasse was recognized as one of the "Drinks Innovators of the Year" by Food & Wine for his work with Tamworth Distilling. That recognition from a mainstream food media outlet — not a spirits trade publication, but a magazine that reaches home cooks and dinner party hosts — says something about how broadly Tamworth's ideas have landed. The distillery has crossed over from the world of spirits obsessives into a wider cultural conversation about where food and drink come from and what they can mean.
Grasse sought out land in one of the most remote areas of New Hampshire, where he, with the assistance of his Head Distiller Matt Power, created Tamworth Distilling. Known for their choice of the unusual and the truly bizarre, Grasse has used what he terms as "creative grenades" to push the brand's sense of enchantment and mysticism. Those creative grenades, it turns out, are backed by actual chemistry. Power's background as an organic chemist means that the weirdness is always disciplined — always in service of a flavor outcome that the rotary evaporator can be calibrated to achieve with precision.
A $10 Million Bet on the Future
Tamworth is not content to remain a curiosity. Tamworth Distilling, the experimental New Hampshire-based distillery known for its boundary-pushing spirits and wilderness-to-bottle ethos, is celebrating its 10th anniversary with the completion of the first phase of a $10 million expansion. Unlike most "pie in the sky" press releases, this milestone isn't hypothetical — the $2.4 million first phase is complete, with a brand-new barrelhouse standing tall just in time for the decade mark.
The expansion begins with the acquisition of 105 acres of additional farmland a tractor ride away from the original distillery — part of a long-term plan to build three more barrelhouses, a 10,000-square-foot production facility, and grow more of the botanicals and grains used in Tamworth's signature spirits. As a rural farm distillery — not an office-park operation — Tamworth is doubling down on its connection to the land by investing in farming, composting, and true closed-loop practices.
All timber for the barrelhouse was sourced within 10 miles of the distillery — largely from Sandwich, New Hampshire. The barrelhouse was constructed using 800-year-old timber framing methods and is held together using handcrafted wooden pegs. Tamworth Distilling's is one of the largest sustainable barrelhouses at this latitude in the U.S. — and one of the few to operate without electricity or fossil fuel heat. That commitment to material authenticity is the physical embodiment of everything the Deerslayer represents in liquid form: a product that is inseparably tied to its landscape, its climate, and the people who work within them.
What the Deerslayer Means for American Whiskey
The American whiskey industry has spent the past decade obsessing over barrel aging, grain sourcing, and proof points. Those conversations are worthwhile, but they operate within a relatively narrow set of assumptions about what whiskey is and what it can be. The Deerslayer challenges those assumptions from a completely different angle. It asks not how to refine the existing tradition, but what happens when you introduce an entirely foreign element — animal protein, forest smoke, wild botanicals — and force the spirit to accommodate it.
The closest historical parallel in the American context might be the colonial-era practice of adding meats, herbs, and spices to distilled spirits for medicinal or culinary purposes — a tradition that largely vanished as the whiskey industry standardized and professionalized itself over the 19th and 20th centuries. Tamworth, in some sense, is reclaiming that lost chapter of American spirits history, filtered through the lens of modern food science and environmental philosophy.
For hunters, the Deerslayer hits differently than it does for a general whiskey consumer. It is a spirit that directly reflects their experience of the landscape — the cold November mornings, the pine and hardwood forest, the particular richness of venison harvested in the rut. Drinking a whiskey that tastes of all those things is not a novelty. It is a form of recognition. And for any man who has field-dressed a deer in the White Mountains and celebrated afterward with a pour of something good, the Deerslayer offers something no standard bourbon or rye can: a spirit that knows exactly where it came from and is not afraid to say so.
As the distillery itself has written of the offering, "savory and smoky notes characterize this one-of-a-kind spirit, with a subtle spice on the palate and a lingering finish." That sentence sounds modest. But in the context of what it took to produce it — the fermented venison, the boreal wood smoke, the pharmaceutical-grade evaporator, the USDA regulatory wall that had to be navigated around — modest is the last word that applies. The Deerslayer is a fully realized act of American craft distilling, one that happens to taste like the woods in November. And that, for the right drinker, is exactly what whiskey should be.
