Our Hudson Valley Distillery Date

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, while the rest of you were rolling out of bed and eating pie for breakfast for the second consecutive day, Alex and I hopped in the car and headed north, up the Hudson. Our destination? Tuthilltown Spirits Distillery, where HowAboutWe for Couples had set us up with a whiskey tour, a signed bottle of booze, and an early dinner at the Tuthilltown House, the restaurant next door.

In the last couple of years, Alex and I have gotten into whisky, rye, and bourbon. There’s always a bottle on our shelf for sipping on these dark winter nights (in a very healthy, one-finger-pour sense of sipping), and so I was really excited when I saw a tour of Tuthilltown listed among the HowAboutWe dates for the fall. Even better, we decided to stay the night in one of the small towns on the west side of the Hudson, making a whole weekend out of the special afternoon. We kept talking about getting out of Brooklyn for a few days, and this was just the push we needed.

On our drive up, we stopped at Sam’s Point Preserve, just south of Minnewaska State Park. We’d heard great things about hiking in both places, but since it was really freezing (we saw our first snow of the season!) we took a short jaunt through a gorgeous trail at Sam’s, known for its high-elevation forest.

Afterwards, we drove to the distillery, where we were thrilled to get a tour of the place from one of its owners, Ralph Erenzo, who was responsible for turning the former mill facility into Tuthilltown. We admired the barrels, learned about distilling not just whiskey but also apple vodka, gin, and bitters, and admired the stout bottles that have become Hudson Whiskey’s signature. I loved the pots, pictured below, that hold the melted wax for sealing each bottle. Here are a few pictures from our tour:

Afterwards, we got to taste four different types of booze and pick out one to take home. Then we headed across the street to dinner, where we ordered two burgers and sank into our comfy seats in the old-fashioned dining room and warmed up.

We’re both sort of dreamers, and we had the best time rehashing the founders’ story of Tuthilltown and throwing out crazy ideas of what we’d build should a former Hudson Valley mill just so happen to fall into our laps. Since we were making a weekend of it, we stayed the night at an adorable B&B 40 minutes north of the distillery. The next morning, after breakfasting with the rest of the B&B crowd (one of our breakfast companions turned out ot have played Mary Poppins on Broadway!), we headed to Saugerties, to see the lighthouse, which sits on a piece of land jutting out into the middle of the Hudson. Turns out it was high tide, so we stopped just before the path devolved into mud and took pictures of the reeds.

We ate lunch in Kingston, New York, a really charming place, then headed back south along the Hudson, back towards home. We were fully relaxed. And of course we had a souvenir: a bottle of Hudson Whiskey’s Manhattan Rye, for sipping at home til the end of the year. We’re looking forward to dates in the new year, like pasta making together and eating wings while playing ping pong, and we really recommend a recent date we went on, where we learned how to repair our bikes!

If you’ve never tried HowAboutWe for Couples, you can join as a new member and get $50 off any date in the collection with this link.

I went on this date and wrote this sponsored post in partnership with HowAboutWe for Couples. You can read about the first date we went on here. Thanks for supporting the sponsors that help inspire BGSK’s content!