A Labor of Love: Harry’s Cocktail Lounge

Harry Gorman has had a hand in the story of Vermont Spirits since its beginnings in 2004, when Duncan Holiday, the founder of the Quechee-based craft distillery, expressed interest in starting the company. Together, they put an idea into motion, and today, it’s a legacy that sticks with the company on their newest journey: turning one of the Upper Valley’s oldest commercial buildings into Harry’s Cocktail Lounge, named after Gorman himself.

Up until devoting his time and crafting abilities into distilling at Vermont Spirits, Gorman was a carpenter specializing in restoring old properties and the plumbing inside of them. In 1988, Gorman had built a house in his neighborhood in Barnet, Vermont for Holiday, and they had become friends during their time as neighbors. In 2000, Holiday introduced the idea of opening the distillery to Gorman, who was in Ireland working on a project at the time, but expressed his potential interest. Later that summer, they decided on a timeline that would work for both of them, with a goal of opening Vermont Spirits to the public in 2004.

Harry Gorman, at the bar in Harry’s Cocktail Lounge.

Gorman initially helped by building the distillery in Barnet, but Holiday wanted to involve him more in the business, and Gorman agreed. Gorman started out as an apprentice, then became a distiller, and throughout the years, went on to be an operations manager and is now the company’s master distiller. In addition to his distilling skills, his carpentry and plumbing skills still come in handy to maintain the mechanical aspects of the distillery. Gorman says, “My role is doing lots of different things, keeping the mechanicals operating, and working because I put them all there, so I know how they work and how to maintain them. I try to take the load off the other distiller as much as possible.” Gorman is also a board member of the company and the company is owned by many investors, including himself, and his job as a board member is to represent shareholders to the board.

With Gorman having been with the company from the start, he has also seen the vast and important changes it’s gone through over the past twenty years. Holiday stepped down from his position in 2008, and a new CEO, Steve Johnson, took over until 2018. “Companies change and the people who run them change,” says Gorman. “For the continued growth and expansion of the company, we chose a new CEO [in 2018], Randy Carlson, and a management group to help run us and build our company into something bigger. In the last five years it’s grown a lot.”

The company makes spirits derived entirely from maple sap and wild juniper, and other ingredients special to Vermont. “They are a one of a kind thing in the world,” says Gorman. Vermont Spirits is currently distributed in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, sold at boutique distributors across the U.S., and available online.

Vermont Spirits was originally headquartered in Barnet and eventually moved to Quechee in 2009 because of a law that had changed, allowing them to sell products from a tasting room housed in the distillery itself. The original Barnet location was tucked away and hard for customers to access in the winter and during mud season, and Quechee allowed them to have more foot traffic and expand their customer base. The company has been successful in expanding their business with Harry’s Cocktail Lounge in September, right next door to the distillery in Quechee Gorge Village. Since Gorman has been with the company from the beginning, the Vermont Spirits team thought it was only appropriate to name the lounge after him.

The plank house, now the home of Harry’s Cocktail Lounge, was built around 1790 and is believed to be the oldest commercial building in Windsor County. Over the years, it’s been a trading post, a family home, and a retail outlet. “We’ve watched it over the years and have always thought it would be great to have it a part of our complex,” says Gorman. With Gorman’s background in carpentry and building restoration, he led the project of bringing new life to the plank house as it became Harry’s Lounge. The walls are made up of wood planks that are three-inch thick boards and anywhere from 10 inches wide to 25 inches wide, all exposed in the lounge and bar area. Gorman also created an outside deck connecting the two buildings for outdoor enjoyment for customers in the warmer months. “When you go into Harry’s Cocktail Lounge, you’re sitting in a piece of history. It’s a really amazing old Vermont building and our products represent

Gorman hopes the lounge will allow tourists and locals to embrace what Vermont has to offer, he says. “We get a lot of tourists, which is really important to us, but we also love having the local people come in and talk to us and having Harry’s Cocktail Lounge will only help that happen.”