George Dickel
Nicole Austin had her sights set on becoming the next Erin Brockovich.
It was the most logical way of putting her chemical engineering degree to use in a way that she felt was meaningful and purposeful. But it was a moment standing in the New York City sewers, wearing hip waders and operating a flow needle, when she thought maybe, just maybe, there might be more out there for an environmental engineer.
“I realized pretty quickly that was probably not what I wanted to do forever,” says Austin.
Nicole Austin
“I was in this amazing bourbon bar in Brooklyn and the bartender was pouring a whiskey and telling me about it and he happened to say something about how it was distilled. And I just had this light bulb moment. This is literally what I went to school for. I could use my degree to do [distilling] as a job.”
As fate would have it, Austin is now the general manager and distiller of the Diageo-owned Cascade Hollow and Distilling, which currently produces six different expressions of George Dickel whiskey with eight more in various stages of development. Just don’t call her a master distiller.
“I purposefully did not want to be referred to as the master distiller. Partly because I think it’s a confusing term. And I thought it implied just a marketing role. You just get pulled out of the closet and dusted off for Whiskey Fest and then put back in.”
Before landing at Cascade Hollow and behind the stills of Dickel, Austin honed her chops at Kings County, the oldest distillery in New York City since Prohibition and one of the early brands launching the craft spirits movement. Then, in 2016, she accepted a role with Tullamore Dew that took her to Ireland for several years. But the call of Tennessee whiskey brought her back stateside, and the opportunity to work with the Dickel brand proved irresistible.
Tennessee whiskey has long stood in the shadow of its bourbon counterpart, even though its quality is arguably on par, if not better, than the popular spirt. She cites the Lincoln County process as one of the reasons her interest in Tennessee whiskey was piqued. The process, which distinctly sets it apart from bourbon, involves running the whiskey through charcoal filtration before bottling the final product. And it’s one that she proudly employs for Dickel.
“The charcoal mellowing is something that I was really interested in because I had never worked with a distillery that used that process,” said Austin. “Using charcoal filtration as a separation staff lets us come at the flavors in two different directions, as opposed to just distillation. It builds a lot of complexity and it’s something I’m really excited about. It gives you a lot of different characters to blend from. And working with mature whiskeys and blending are my particular areas of passion.”
George Dickel
Austin is actively working to change the backseat status of Tennessee’s juice, bringing a healthy dose of experimentation, innovation, and excitement to the category— and whiskey fans have taken note. In fact, Cascade Hollow recently released an expression called “Cascade Moon,” an 11-year-old whiskey incorporating the broth-y, savory fluidity of gose-style beer with notes of fresh fruit. Tennessee Brew Works, who collaborated on the beer-style whiskey, will be making a reciprocal whiskey-inspired beer from barrels used to age Dickel.
“I’m starting to be a little bit more intentional in my collaboration with them. Brewers are just so much more sophisticated than [distillers] when it comes to things like fermentation management. I have a lot to learn from them.”