Finger Lakes Distilling started with two men who shared a name and nothing else. Brian McKenzie, a banker from Elmira, New York, and Thomas Earl McKenzie, a brewer and winemaker from Monroeville, Alabama, met at a craft distillers' conference in 2007, discovered they had complementary skills and identical surnames, and opened the Finger Lakes region's first stand-alone distillery on the eastern shore of Seneca Lake in Burdett — a Scottish-inspired building with a deck overlooking the deepest lake in New York. It operates as a New York State Farm Distillery, meaning the majority of its raw materials come from state farms, and the rye grows literally across the lake. A few stubborn house rules shape everything: whiskey enters the barrel at a low 100 proof rather than the industry-standard 115 to 125, so more of the oak's natural sugars break down and less grain character is diluted, and nothing is chill filtered. The McKenzie whiskey line is the flagship — a Chardonnay-finished Bourbon, an Empire Rye finished in local sherry barrels, a Bottled-in-Bond Four Grain, an Irish-style Pure Pot Still, single barrel picks, and a rare 10-year single malt. Because it sits in wine country, the distillery also makes what few American whiskey houses can: apple brandy aged in its own bourbon barrels and sweetened with New York maple syrup, fruit liqueurs from regional black currants, raspberries, and cherries, grape brandy, and grappa. A genuine expression of the Finger Lakes in a bottle.

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