A Visit to Lansdale’s Boardroom Spirits

When Round Guys Brewing Company opened, Lansdale became a destination for beer lovers from all over the area. Now Lansdale will be a destination for liquor lovers as well. Boardroom Spirits started production in November 2015 and has been creating amazing spirits since.

Boardroom focuses on high-quality, precision-made spirits and innovative products. The company also strives to source its ingredients locally and organically with a heavy focus on sustainability. Further, Boardroom also refuses to use any artificial ingredients and tries to avoid genetically modified ingredients.

The Tasting Room

boardroom-bar-and tasting room

I recently had the pleasure of visiting the Boardroom Spirits distillery in Lansdale to try some of its precision-made spirits. There I got to meet founders Marat Mamedov, Vlad Mamedov and Zsuzsa Palotas. Boardroom Spirits is a family operation; Marat and Vlad are brothers, and Zsuzsa and Marat are married. All three of them come from similar backgrounds in corporate settings and wanted to start their own business to create something different.

We met at the facility’s dark-stained wooden bar in the distillery’s tasting area. The bar is fully stocked with Boardroom products as well as freshly squeezed juices and fresh-made mixers. The tasting room, open from Wednesdays to Sundays, offers a range of drinks as well as tours. Boardroom Spirits’ bottled products are also available for sale at the tasting room. If you come on Fridays when the weather is nice, you may also find a rotating lineup of food trucks parked just outside of the tasting room.

Attention to Detail

The trio started research and development in Hungary in September 2014 with their Romanian master distiller Attila. Boardroom has invested a massive amount of time and resources into its research and development program, creating and testing 85 different spirit recipes and 40 different whiskeys of all styles. This program has lead to the selection of only the best recipes for production, ensuring that the consumer gets the best tasting product.

Boardroom Spirits also uses two state-of-the-art, fully automated, temperature-controlled Hagyo stills. The stills can create a wide range of liquors with the touch of a button and are loaded with sensors to ensure the utmost consistency in every bottle produced.

boardroom barrels

This high attention to detail also reflects in the labeling on bottles. Boardroom Spirits focuses on informing its consumers as much as possible. All labels include every ingredient used in the product. Boardroom also plans to include calorie counts on bottles in the future.

While many other liquor companies outsource distilling to third parties, Boardroom distills every spirit in the Lansdale facility. Many competing brands only list where their alcohol is bottled. The labels on every Boardroom Spirits’ bottle reads “Distilled & bottled by Boardroom Spirits, LLC in Lansdale PA” to inform the consumer of the true source of the products.

Boardroom also strives to reduce waste and help the environment as much as possible. Environmental initiatives include cleaning and reusing bottles, using a cat for pest control, donating used ingredients to farms for feed and fertilizer and using heads (harsh unusable early runnings of liquor from the still) as a cleanser and sanitizer. The Hagyo stills are also extremely efficient and use a small percentage of the gas and electricity of normal stills.

B Brandy

boardroom-bBoardroom Spirits currently offers five products that are available for sale at the distillery and at many local bars and restaurants: vodka, cranberry-infused vodka, citrus-infused vodka, gin and “B”, Boardroom’s recently released first product in its alphabet themed brandy line.

“B” is a beet-flavored clear brandy that harkens back to the traditional brandies of Europe. Europe has a long tradition of creating eau de vie, a French term for clear fruit brandies that are not barrel aged. This style of brandy is very different from the overly sweetened and syrupy brown brandies available in the United States. Traditional clear brandies are meant to mimic the experience of picking the fruit off of the tree and eating it fresh. The eau de vie style has a strong emphasis on the natural aroma of the fruit or vegetable used as well as a fresh flavor.

Boardroom Spirits’ “B” was like nothing I have ever drank before. The smell has the exact aroma you get when cutting open a fresh beet. The flavor was spot on as well. This brandy can be enjoyed neat or on the rocks and is perfect for making creative cocktails. While touring the distillery I sampled a Beetini, made with “B”, vodka, pickled beet kvass and bloody Mary mix and garnished with a pickled beet. The cocktail starts with the flavor of beet upfront then turns smokey and finishes off salty.

Vodkas

Boardroom Spirits’ double gold medal-winning vodka is very smooth—one that’s great for sipping neat or on the rocks. A second vodka, which is cranberry-infused, is made from organic sugar cane and fresh cranberries. The flavor is tart, bright and not overly sweet, like many flavored vodkas on the market. Boardroom’s other infused vodka, citrus-infused vodka, starts with an organic wheat vodka base and then adds fresh lemon, lime and orange fruit and zest. This spirit has a great aroma and a bright, fresh flavor from the natural fruit.

boardroom-voda-collage

Gin

The owners of Boardroom Spirits are not big fans of gin, so when they began development on their own, they wanted something out of the ordinary. They decided to create a New American style gin, which is a more creative take on the traditional London Dry style gins that are so popular.

Most London Dry gins rely heavily on juniper to create their flavor and smell. Boardroom Gin utilizes juniper as well, but the juniper aroma and flavor are much more subdued. This smooth spirit starts out with a strong citrus flavor, followed by black pepper in the middle and ending with a mellow evergreen finish. I am not the only one that was blown away by this gin—Boardroom Gin was recently featured in a Forbes.com article of favorite new gins.

Upcoming Products

boardroom-storage-area

While visiting with the owners I had the pleasure of sampling several upcoming products. The next product to be released is an unaged organic sugar cane rum. It was clean and smooth but still had a mellow molasses flavor. I also sampled an aromatic pear brandy that will be released with the brandy alphabet series as well as Boardroom’s triple sec, which tasted much fresher, vibrant and less syrupy and artificial than those available on the market.

Boardroom is also are working on an apple brandy, a carrot brandy, a ginger-infused vodka, an orange-infused vodka and several more interesting spirits.

Boardroom Spirits’ high-quality, precision-made liquors are definitely worth the trip to Lansdale. The product line will be constantly expanding with new and exciting spirits, all of which are worth keeping on your radar.

Visit the distillery from 4–9 p.m., Wednesdays–Fridays; 11 a.m.–9 p.m. on Saturdays; and 11 a.m.–8 p.m. on Sundays. Follow along on Facebook and Instagram to learn more about Boardroom’s upcoming events, which frequently include dog adoption nights.

Find Boardroom Spirits at 575 W. Third St. in Lansdale; phone: (267) 642-9961

  • Tasting room photo: Vanessa Beahn
  • "B" photo: Boardroom Spirits
  • Remaining photos: Lowell Morin