Darek Bell

Darek Bell is the founder and co-owner of Corsair Distillery in Nashville, Tennessee. The Music City native is in the construction business, but began his distilling career in his downtime by homebrewing beer, wine, and sake. Bell says that homebrewing changed his life—the more he did it, the more addicted he became.“It was creative yet incredibly technical,” says Darek, “Brewers were creating new, exciting beers the world had never seen before. This became the real addiction. It is what got me pumped, excited, and made me feel really alive. Brewing was my gasoline!”

Darek and his childhood friend and now business partner, Andrew Webber, together had also begun experimenting with other spirits, for instance, cider and mead. They even started making biodiesel for an old car that was sitting around. One day while sweating over a foul batch of biodiesel, Andrew turned to Darek and said, “I wish we were making whiskey.” A lightbulb went off, and just like that, the duo shifted their focus and began working on a whiskey still. Unfortunately, in 2008, it was not yet legal to distill in Nashville, so Webber and Bell set up their first operation an hour away in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It took about a year of hard work by many people to get the law in Tennessee, as well as a local ordinance, changed to allow distilling in Nashville.

Darek is an alumnus of Hampshire College, but was also formally trained in spirit-making at the Siebel Brewing Institute. Additionally, he is a graduate of the Bruichladdich Distilling Academy in Islay, Scotland. As to the difference in Scotch whiskey drinkers and their American counterparts, Darek talks of a time at the Bruichladdich where he was shaken from bed at 6 a.m. and immediately had a glass of Scotch shoved in his face. “They’d just have us start drinking instantly,” he laughs. “It was like drinking boot camp. I could not keep up. In Scotland, they talk about breakfast whiskies,” he says, “Americans don’t have that category.” Perhaps that is unfortunate, because according to Bell, Corsair’s Oatmeal stout whiskey ‘Tastes a lot like Honey Nut Cheerios.’

Darek has written two books about distilling. His first book, ‘Alt Whiskeys’, was highly praised and was called a “milestone in the lit of American Distilling” by spirits writer Matthew Rowley. In the book, Bell shared his experiments with alternative and smoked grains and unusual botanicals. In fact, The Corsair Distillery’s niche is focused on spirits using alternative and atypical smoked grains and uncommon botanicals. “Because we are in the shadow of two massive distilleries here in Tennessee, we decided early on to focus on unusual whiskeys,” says Darek, “We cannot possibly compete with them in terms of marketing dollars, and so we try not to. We always wanted to be respectful of tradition, but make whiskeys that were anything but (traditional). I believe there is a whole generation of drinkers coming up who do not want to drink what their parents drink. Plus, from the get-go, we felt the need to separate ourselves.”

So, the Corsair crew is constantly searching for new ideas and original ways to differentiate itself from traditional, mainstream whiskey. In doing so, they also use mash bills that utilize unusual grains, for instance, quinoa or malts that are used frequently in brewing but rarely in distilling, such as chocolate rye malt, biscuit malt, or caramel 120. Bell says that Corsair distills beer to make hopped whiskeys or whiskeys that are strongly influenced by the beer they’re distilled from. Because of this innovative use of unusual items to flavor his whiskey, Bell was named one of the “10 most pioneering distillers” by Spirits Business Magazine. In Darek’s second book, ‘Fire Water’, Bell discussed the techniques and methods of smoking grains to create these unique whiskey flavors.

It is not surprising, then, with Bell’s Scotch background, that his “off” hours drink is heavy, smoky, peaty Scotch. The distiller also loves craft beer, “the hoppier and darker the better.”Corsair also makes other spirits in addition to whiskey and Tennessee whiskey. These include dark rum, spiced rum, vanilla bean vodka, several different kinds of gin, and red absinthe.

Darek is married to the former Amy Lee Gogo, a New Jersey native who worked in copyrighting and advertising in the Northeast. She came to Tennessee to focus on writing when the two met and married. They now have three children together, and the family lives near Nashville on a farm where they now produce the malt that is used at Corsair.

Sources: Distiller, Virginia Miller;  July 2014.

Observer Magazine, Nashville; Rafi Kohan, October 2014.

Contributed by: Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee