Smugglers' Notch Distillery

Butterfly Bakery of Vermont & Fat Toad Farm

"Butterfly Bakery gives us a market we don’t have to invent or manage every single day. If I get a flat tire, I’m not missing my one chance to sell that week. Our days are more predictable and our mission is clearer. We can focus on growing 15 crops really well instead of juggling 30 just to stay competitive at the farmers’ market. I can focus on farming instead of marketing."

- Geoff Kleis of Familia Farm

Smugglers' Notch Distillery

Since launching their Double Gold Award-Winning Vodka back in 2010, Smugglers' Notch Distillery (SND) has grown organically and gone on to craft multiple gold and silver medal award-winning bourbons, gins, rum, rye, flavored vodka, Double Gold Winning Vermont Maple Cream Liqueur, and most recently, Maple Gin and Vermont Bourbon Maple Cream Liqueur.

SND's backstory is a fun one. In 2006 Ron Elliot, a retired business executive, teamed up with his son Jeremy Elliot, a research chemist in the pharmaceutical industry, to follow their collective passion to establish a distillery in the Vermont mountainside. As serendipity would have it, Jeremy’s pharmaceutical firm wanted to send him overseas, but Jeremy had other ideas. He wanted to stay in Vermont where he had lived since graduating from the University of Vermont.

In searching for ways to stay in Vermont, Jeremy took some time off to learn about distilling and develop a formula for creating a smooth and flavorful vodka, a tricky task. His professed goal: to make the world’s best vodka! During the quest for investors, father and son decided to keep the company solely a family partnership and set to work on developing a brand, an operational plan and site, and applying for all of the federal and state permitting required.

To their delight, within the first 9 months of the release in 2010, the vodka had won the highest awards that can be won in the spirits industry: A Gold medal from the Beverage Testing Institute; awarded 95 points by Wine Enthusiast which earned it the title of #1 domestic vodka; and a Double Gold medal in the World Spirits Competition in San Francisco.

Today SND has four Vermont tasting rooms including one in Burlington, Stowe/Waterbury, Manchester, and at the flagship store in the 10-acre distillery facility in Jeffersonville. There visitors can learn about the story and process of this father/son dream come true.

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