As she describes it, F.E.W. Spirits distiller Sydney Jones “got into whiskey completely by accident.”
She and her then-husband, who was a member of the military police, moved to Kentucky in 2014 when he was assigned to the Army base at Fort Campbell. They were both from Florida and decided they would like to explore their new home state. Naturally, this exploration included touring many of Kentucky’s iconic bourbon distilleries, one of which was very near their home.
“There was a craft distillery about 15 minutes away from MB Roland, which offered tours and I loved taking whiskey tours at this point. I signed up for the Distillers Tour, which at the time was still being conducted by Paul and Mary Beth Tomaszewski, who own and operated the distillery,” recalled Jones.
Jones and a friend were the only people on the tour that day. She had become so enamored of bourbon that she’d devoured books and articles about the whiskey. Thanks to the knowledge she’d picked up she started asking some very detailed questions.
“I just wanted to know everything. I was so, so interested in what they were doing. And at one point in the tour Paul kind of paused and said, ‘Do you work in this industry? Why are you asking about COLA labeling specifications on this tour?’ And I had to meekly explain that, no, I just was a huge fan.” Much to Jones’s surprise, Tomaszewski looked at her and said, “Would you like a job here?”
She started as a tour guide, but was soon joining Tomaszewski in the rickhouse tasting samples from aging barrels. She was allowed to shadow the production team and was soon learning hands-on all the steps to the whiskey making process from grinding grain to distilling to proofing. But Jones’s apprenticeship came to an end when her marriage as she described it “imploded” and she moved back to Florida.
But she had a plan.
A new craft distillery in downtown Jacksonville, Manifest Distilling, was just down the road from where she was living.
She went on a tour. She took along her resumé. She was the only person on the tour. “At the end of the tour I asked them to please hire me, and they did.” For Jones, history repeated itself.
Jones said that Manifest is where she, “really, truly cut my teeth and started to hone this craft that I had started to come into in Kentucky. I created a few products that joined the portfolio. Worked a lot on whiskey production and a lot on gin production.”
And then, in 2021, she saw a posting on Instagram by Paul Hletko of F.E.W. Spirits in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago.
Founded in 2016, its portfolio includes bourbon, rye, malt whiskey, and gin. Hletko was looking to hire “creative and artistic distillers.” Jones had just released a gin with Manifest and while she thought Hletko would probably want someone with more experience, she was hired.
“I love that there is this spirit of being experimental and trying things. If they don’t work, they don’t work. But if they do, that’s incredible. We have some really cool random projects that are currently aging right now.”
What advice would Jones give someone trying to get into the bourbon industry? “Take a tour and ask questions!”
Try New Things
“I love that there is this spirit of being experimental and trying things. If they don’t work, they don’t work. But if they do, that’s incredible. We have some really cool random projects that are currently aging right now.”
Former restaurant critic and beverage columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal, Susan is bourbon columnist for Food & Dining and Covey Rise magazines and also writes for Bourbon+, LEO Weekly, and American Whiskey (tasting notes and ratings). Susan has authored or co-authored six books including Kentucky Bourbon Country: The Essential Travel Guide, The Kentucky Bourbon Cocktail Book, The Bourbon Tasting Notebook, and The American Whiskey Tasting Notebook, and Which Fork Do I Use with My Bourbon? – Setting the Table for Tastings, Food Pairings, Dinner, and Cocktail Parties. Susan is a member of the Order of the Writ, former president of both the Bourbon Women Association and the Kentucky chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier International, an organization of women culinary professionals.