Just after dusk on Monday, October 10th, 1932 federal agents set upon Harvest Homestead Farm in Pine Plains, New York. There, they uncovered the largest bootlegging operation ever found in Dutchess County - a massive underground concrete bunker containing two 2,000 gallon stills, 10,000 pounds of sugar, and 1,000 gallons of Sugar Wash Moonshine. A sprawling network of interconnected tunnels spread throughout the property made it "one of the most extensive and elaborate layouts ever found."

A Varied History

Over the next 78 years, the farm would undergo many changes. Its owner, Patrick Ryan, was a retired New York City policeman, which may have played a part in his avoidance of prison for harboring the distillery. After the raid, he quietly reverted the property back to its turkey farm origins. A few years later, it was purchased by a German group, WDAN, turning the farm into an old age commune. Although they worked tirelessly raising corn, cows, pigs, horses and chickens, this too, did not last. Over the years the property was used as a guest house and retreat, a slaughterhouse, and finally, in 1969, was purchased by Janet and Charles Adams, a “potato harvester” who had worked at the bootleg distillery over thirty years earlier. For forty more years, the Adams family kept watch over the farm and its buried secrets. Then, in the spring of 2008, Charles’s grandson Alex Adams and close friend Ariel Schlein learned of the passage of the New York farm distillers’ law. They decided it was time to write another chapter in Dutch’s history.

Revitalizing The Past

In July 2011, after an extensive archaeological survey and review, the site was added to the New York State Archaeological Inventory as a “Bootleg Era Bunker Complex”, while the New York State Historic Preservation Office deemed it eligible for inclusion in the State and National Register of Historic places. Between 2011-2015, our tasting room and distillery was built in the footprint of the original bunkhouse site, and we are in the process of reviving the farmland and restoring the bunkers for a rick house and museum that will help bring this rich history to light. In late 2017 Brendan McAlpine purchased Dutch’s Spirits, and the distillery received its federal distilling permit on October 10, 2018, 86 years to the day the FBI raided the farm and broke up Dutch’s operation. In September 2020 our tasting room and grounds were reopened to the public, and on Raid Day (October 10) 2020, the first batch of Sugar Wash Moonshine blended in Pine Plains since prohibition was bottled in our distillery, just steps from the very bunkers that Dutch’s gang bootlegged so many years before.