Lyon Distilling Company

Last weekend my friends and I were in town for the Oyster Festival. After indulging in large amounts of oysters, we decided to stop into the Distillery. We were greeted by the mother and wife team behind the bar that offered up two different rums to taste. I am not much of a straight-​liquor drinker so both of them were intense for me, but my friends enjoyed both of the samples we tried. They offered me some ginger beer to mix with my tasting which was nice. We didn’t go on the tour because we arrived pretty late in the afternoon, but I found these women to be extremely pleasant and friendly. I would definitely recommend stopping into the distillery if you are in St. Michael’s.

We missed the tour, so sad, but luckily were able to still do a tasting and learn a bit about this distillery. We tasted a white rum and a dark rum, and then a reserve that was a dark rum that had been stored in oak barrels. I enjoyed sampling and tasting the differences in each rum. Ultimately, my favorite was the dark rum: it was carmely, a sweetness of brown sugar or perhaps pralines. I took a bottle of the dark rum home, and shared a pour with my neighbors who all agreed that it was delicious. I am not your typical liquor drinker, especially not one to drink rum neat. This rum, on the other hand, I was not only able to drink it neat (making me feel so refined) I actually enjoyed it.
The employee who helped us was very nice and gave us the right sized pours: enough to smell, sip, and swill to get the full effect, but not so much that you left drunk as a skunk. Tastings are free. They also carry a variety of auxiliary products like syrups and tonics. The only improvement I could see is that I felt like our experience was too short, and that we had to coax the information about the distillery and the rums out of the employee with a series of questions. Luckily, we knew enough about distilleries to have a bunch of questions on hand, but to a newcomer who doesn’t know what to ask, the experience might fall short.