Basildon Collins, featuring Thai basil, raspberries, and vodka;
Black Knight, featuring blackerries, mint, and whiskey
Photo by Kevin Kramer
Cocktail hour in the Twin Cities has a new ruler. Royal Foundry Craft Spirits’ drink menu is loaded with colorful, fragrant, and refreshing ways to smooth out the day’s roughest edges. The beverages incorporate British-style gin, rum, single malt whiskey, and vodka distilled on site.
Beverage director Marlon Hanson honed his drink-concocting skills at 6Smith in Wayzata. His menu inspirations range from Seinfeld (What’s the Dill?) to Monty Python and the Holy Grail (The Black Knight).
Chief distiller Andy McLain’s parents are English, and so is the feel inside the 15,000-square-foot facility. British signifiers include a wall-size Union Jack above three lanes for skittles (a European, nine-pin type of bowling). There’s also a vintage red telephone box and a white Tube-tile wall adorned with David Bowie and Blur posters. Unsurprisingly, another local Anglophile enterprise, the Potter’s Pasties & Pies food truck, has started parking at the distillery from time to time.
Royal Foundry Craft Spirits shares its building with La Doña Cervecería’s also-spacious taproom in the emerging Harrison neighborhood a few blocks west of International Market Square. By June, a 70-meter dirt-bicycle racing track—said to be the first of its kind in the U.S.—is set to appear next to the distillery’s outdoor deck.
Royal Foundry Craft Spirits
241 Fremont Ave. N., Minneapolis
royalfoundrycraftspirits.com
