You can’t make authentic American whiskey in a factory. The good news is that there is still a man keeping the traditions of the Wild West’s greatest distillers alive. Dovetail Distillery is Nicholas Cataldo’s love letter to the history of his local Nevada and beyond. Here’s what goes into his whiskey.
If you want a lesson in authenticity – walk five miles out of Reno, Nevada.
Coyotes howl. Wild horses run by, as if spooked by ghosts: the prospectors who gambled and lost in the silver mines of Comstock Lode. Knee-high shrubs clot the jagged hills – trembling in the dusty wind. Like a horse that could never be broken – the land remains just how the cowboys, miners and frontier legends had left it.
Look around, you’re in the bona-fide West.
Wander some 15 more miles south, you’ll find yourself in a town they call Mound House. There’s a man there who goes by the name Nicholas Cataldo. Like the land that he lives on, Cataldo authentically preserves the spirit of the West – meticulously crafting small batch and premium oat whiskey at Dovetail Distillery.
Cataldo heeds the rich history and traditions of the Nevada distillers who came before him. This faithfulness ensures that Dovetail is whiskey just like the frontier legends – Kit Carson included – used to make it.
“Depending on where you go in this state,” Cataldo says, “and you don’t have to go far – you feel like you’ve traveled 150 years into the past. That’s why I make our whiskey using the process that was used on ranches throughout the western frontier in the mid-1800s.”
The distiller’s passion for the lore of these lands can be felt before you even pull the cork. Mound House was once a Basque settlement, so it’s only right that Dovetail pours from a classic Spanish wine bottle. The label that adorns it is brandished with a silver logo, a celebration of the nearby Comstock Lode that ended the California gold rush and gave Nevada its statehood.
Uncorked, one gets to taste and smell the fruits of Cataldo’s labor – and it’s as Nevada as Nevada itself. The distiller gets his water from the famous Carson river – which originates from the snow melt from the Sierra Mountains. This snow not only gave Nevada its name – it also grants Dovetail its smoothness.
“Running off the Sierras,” Cataldo explains, “it’s picked up all these minerals along the way and it has a very soft texture to it. Using that to proof down the spirit, it softens the edge of the alcohol.”
Take a sip – grassy tones cut above a caramel finish. When the dust settles – it’s the flavor of the whiskey’s signature oats that emerges as the sheriff holding the palette in check. If everything else is Nevada’s history bottled – these oats distill from Cataldo’s own history.
“The whole thing came out of my mom’s cookies,” Cataldo smiles. “Her cookies have always been number one.”
In a past life, Cataldo – a California native – was a top chef in New York City. While Cataldo ran some of the Big Apple’s most exclusive kitchens, time with family out West was sparse. His mother’s oatmeal cookies, mailed to him on his birthday every year, were precious and savored. It’s the warm flavor of the oats that would be the birth of Dovetail Distillery’s whiskey blend.
If Marty Robbins was still writing cowboy ballads, he’d have a verse or two to sing about the time a New York City chef raised stakes and moved to Nevada to distill whiskey. Cataldo’s journey west followed in the rut ways of the pilgrims, settlers and cowboys who had blazed the trail back at the start of the Antebellum.
Even this journey is distilled in the taste of Dovetail. Cataldo uses small, 10- to 15-gallon barrels for his aged whiskey.
“If you were taking a wagon from New York 100 years ago,” Cataldo explains, “you’d have everything loaded up with you – sugar, coffee, flour, whatever – in either canvas sacks or in those 10-gallon barrels. It had to be small enough to carry – and they would be repurposed when it came time to distill whiskey.”
For Cataldo – keeping this tradition alive was crucial to nailing the authentic taste of Dovetail.
The smaller barrel offers more surface area for the whiskey to age faster – allowing it to adopt the flavor of the wood before losing the grassy overtones. It’s a result that’s grown all but mythological in an age of big-factory distilling – which only makes the meticulous work of Cataldo all the more exciting.
This excitement caught fire as more and more Nevadan’s came out to support their local whiskey-slinger.
“These guys I’ve met here,” Cataldo says, “they all know exactly what I’m doing. We’re keeping the history alive, learning the techniques, and understanding why they work – in all their depths.”
It’s a love letter to those who built the West – bottled, corked, and ready to drink. But just like the distillers who came before, Cataldo has a higher destiny to manifest.
You’ll know it at the first sip. The brands at the top of the whiskey game have had a time of it in the sun. But if there’s anything we learned from the Wild West – it’s that there always comes a faster gun.
That gun is called Dovetail and Nicholas Cataldo is at the trigger.
If that’s not an authentic taste of the West – I don’t know what to tell you.
The barrels are small, the thirst is big – try to get your hands on a bottle of Dovetail Distillery’s whiskey here.
Follow along as Nicholas Cataldo blazes the trail on their Instagram.
Members of the editorial and news staff of the Las Vegas Review-Journal were not involved in the creation of this content.