Sauced

The Mischief team has big plans for the distillery. The parking lot has been paved over to use as an event space, complete with stage, that will be blocked off from the street by a tall gate. Just to the right of the gate is an auxiliary building that will be expanded and converted into a bar and rooftop space for partiers and concert-goers. They’ve started their own record label, Bootleg Records, and already have artists lined up for summer events.

The aesthetic of the distillery and tasting room is a bit eclectic, but all the parts mesh together. Sherlock used to build floating homes and he brought that Arts and Crafts workmanship to the tasting room. Combined with an affinity for steampunk (stemming from Sherlock’s love for Jules Verne), you get the detail-packed room you see here. They also have a thing for flappers: There are four “Mischief Girls” who pose for pinup-style pics. It’s retro, classy, and fun.

Looking for lapel pins and other trinkets may feel mischievous, but that’s what the Sherlocks want—you’re supposed to dig through their drawers.

Andrew Carson’s kinetic sculpture on the wall in the distillery adds to the fantastical-industrial complex of the distillery.

Fremont Mischief’s main still, named Nadia (the stills and tanks all have names) produces an impressive quantity of bottles per month. (Sherlock prefers not to reveal the actual number.)

The still works are crammed together in a dense web of copper and stainless steel that the kid inside you wants to start climbing.

Sherlock is big on the Jules Verne, so when regulators told them they needed access to the top of a collection tank, they went overboard with an ornate ladder and platform that form a submarine’s conning tower.

After bubbling its way through the Willy Wonka–like maze of pipe, distilled spirit bubbles up here where the distillers judge it and sort it into heads, heart, and tails. The heads are high proof and volatile, and tails are low proof and impure. The heart is the stuff you take home and drink.

Empty bottles waiting to be filled. Sherlock explains that the M in their logo makes both devil’s horns, for mischief; and a heart that represents their love for Fremont, the ways they give back to the community, and that their spirits are all heart (did you read the previous slide?).

Fremont Mischief Vodka, John Jacob rye whiskey, and Fremont Mischief Whiskey sit in the distillery’s command center. The vodka’s not chill- or carbon-filtered, so if you’ve been avoiding vodka since freshman year of college, this probably won’t cause any flashbacks. The John Jacob whiskey is made with a rye-mash recipe and aged two years, the other whiskey is aged eight years. Sherlock recommends a dirty martini, on the rocks, and a Manhattan, respectively, as the ways to drink them. For their gin coming in February, he suggests a classic gin and tonic.