Kansas City was once a rugged town built along rocky, limestone bluffs that towered above the mud gullies along the Missouri River. You’d be forgiven for thinking Kansas City got its first nickname, Gully Town, from this natural phenomenon, but no. The derogatory term came after the collection of Irish, German, and Italian laborers worked to make streets and foundations for homes into the rock and soil itself. Restless Spirits Distillery honors the history of these laborers as well as their own Irish American heritage with the release of three unique whiskeys—a straight American single malt, an American single malt, and a double barrel-aged American single malt—all named GullyTown.Â
Since opening the distillery in 2014, the husband-and-wife team of Benay and Michael Shannon has won multiple awards, repeatedly been named Missouri Distillery of the Year, and become a cult favorite for local, discerning whiskey connoisseurs. But at the heart of the distillery’s new release are touches dedicated to the history of the Shannon family and Kansas City itself. “I come from Irish heritage; my great-great-grandfather worked on the railroad as a laborer and settled here in the late 1800s,” says Michael. “We thought, let’s make [Gully Town] cool. These are people who really worked their butts off to give us technology and transportation that wasn’t available at the time this far west. Let’s honor that.”
Benay Shannon is an award-winning master distiller and the first woman to run a DSP (distilled spirit plant) in Missouri. And she’s self-taught. “I borrowed some lab equipment from the school over the summer,” she says, but the science teacher-turned-distiller is quick to mention, “I took it back.” Since then, she’s worked on perfecting the Irish-style whiskey for Restless Spirits Distilling, an aging process using used barrels. Because Irish whiskey is a geographically protected designation, the Shannons compromised on the labeling, but the distilling process is still similar to what you’d find in Dublin or Killarney.Â
“There’s a science and an art to this,” says Michael. “Probably on the distilling side, there’s more science than art. But I think the real gift is in the blending, taste profile things—she doesn’t even do it by taste. She goes by smell. Most distilleries have a distiller and a blender, and Benay does both. That’s a unique skill set.” Restless Spirits started out making malt whiskey, and they haven’t deviated. “There’s a lot of competition in the bourbon space because that’s the American spirit. So, it’s nice for us to kind of have ownership of malt whiskies,” says Michael. “We’re proud to say it’s the only type of whiskey Restless Spirits has ever made.”Â
The Restless Spirits Tasting Room is an inviting space with leather couches, and rather than keeping it to themselves, the Shannons are inviting the public to a tasting of their three new GullyTown spirits in three forms—a flight, a featured cocktail, or a full bottle. If you head over on September 14, you might get lucky and hear about their next release—are you thinking Irish pirates?