When Duncan and his family set up their tent on the Old Smith Farm in 1988, nothing was standing but the 150-yearold barn foundation.

Over the next ten years, while teaching and traveling around the world, they built their off-the-grid house, opened some of the fields and started organic gardens. Their dream was to return and make a living on the farm. They found a way to do it in 1998 when they established Duncan’s Spirits, the company that produces Vermont Spirits.

The idea was simple — vodka from maple sap. They set out to tap the maple trees for sugar, develop the springs for pure water, cut firewood for the stills. From their own hemlocks and pine, they built a post and beam barn on the old foundation to house the stills. The stills themselves were fashioned from maple arches with high towers to catch and condense the steam. They even tried to make bottles from the clay at the old brickworks down by the brook before settling on more practical glass.

After a year and a half of designing, building and perfecting, the distillery burned to the ground the night before their first delivery. Daunted but not defeated, they rebuilt the distillery, this time with more efficient stills and a wood-fired steam boiler for power. Within six months they were distilling again, and in August 2001, Vermont Spirits made its first appearance in Vermont liquor outlets.