He's bottling lightning
April 18, 2010 12:36 am
Jim Sinden has teamed up with Belmont Farm Distillery and created Virginia Lightning Moonshine BBQ Sauce, which is sold at several local outlets. |
BY CATHY JETT
Jim Sinden is hoping that lightning strikes for his latest barbecue sauce.
White lightning, that is.
The Spotsylvania County creator of the Battlefield Gourmet line of sauces has joined forces with a Culpeper County distillery to create Virginia Lightning Moonshine BBQ Sauce.
"It's selling like crazy," he said. "It's instantly become my No. 1 product."
Sinden, a retired Marine, was inspired to create a 'shine-spiked sauce after a friend introduced him to Chuck and Jeanette Miller, who craft Virginia Lightning fresh corn whiskey from an old family recipe at their Belmont Farm Distillery.
He was hoping that they'd stock his three barbecue sauces, which bear the Virginia's Finest seal, in their gift shop. But after looking at their operation, Sinden asked if Chuck Miller had ever considered selling a barbecue sauce made with either Virginia Lightning or a triple-grain whiskey Miller makes called Kopper Kettle.
"He tilted his cowboy hat on the back of his head and said, 'Hell, Jack Daniel's is doing it, but I want to do a moonshine barbecue sauce. Moonshine sells,'" Sinden said.
Sinden, who prides himself on being able to reproduce any gourmet meal he eats at a restaurant, went straight home and created one from scratch that night. He showed up at Belmont the next day with a sample, but ended up tweaking the recipe a bit because Jeanette Miller thought it was too hot.
The resulting sauce has a "barely legal" shot of Virginia Lightning, unlike some bourbon barbecue sauces that Sinden says rely more on flavoring than the real thing. For an extra smoky whiskey hit, he tosses a sterilized cheesecloth bag containing wooden blocks into each batch. The blocks are cut from the charred oak barrels used to age the Millers' Kopper Kettle whiskey.
"What I love about it is that it's all regional," Sinden said. "I'm using moonshine distilled in Culpeper, and Chuck gets his oak barrels from Culpeper."
Making the sauce, however, was the easy part. Sinden had to reach an agreement with the Millers, get approval from the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board and work with a manufacturer in Virginia Beach to translate his recipe for a half gallon of sauce into one that can produce however many gallons he needs to bottle.
"I stand over the vat with a wooden spoon and compare it to what I brought," he said. "Whenever it gets to what I want, it's an automatic run."
Sinden originally thought about putting his sauce in whiskey flasks so they'd stand out from other barbecue sauces on the market. But it proved too hard to get the thick sauce out of the bottles, he said. Instead, Virginia Lightning Moonshine BBQ Sauce is packed in glass jars that bear a label similar to the one the Millers use for Virginia Lightning.
Sinden tacked on the words "barely legal" because the ABC Board has given its nod of approval for the sauce to be sold without a liquor license.
"When ABC found out I was doing this, they started sending me e-mails and statutes saying it was a Class 6 felony if I didn't comply," he said.
Sinden got Virginia Tech to evaluate his sauce and was able to report that it was within the legal limit for alcohol in a product. He said that's about 0.10 percent.
Virginia Lightning Moonshine BBQ Sauce went into production April 2, and Sinden said he sold the first batch of 15 cases to area retailers in 31/2 hours. They're now available in at about half a dozen places.
For now, Sinden is focused on getting area retailers to carry his moonshine barbecue sauce. He delivers the product himself, but he's trying to persuade Wythe Will Distributing, a regional firm near Williamsburg, to sell the sauce to gourmet shops so he can concentrate on turning what had been a part-time business into a full-time operation and expand his line of products.
"This is really exciting for me because I've been working on it for a long time," Sinden said. "I'm not there yet, but I'm on the verge."