Next time you take a nip or a nibble, check to see if it was made in Nashville
by Carrington FoxArticle Tools
If you thought GooGoos and Garth were the only brand names exported from Nashville, take another look at the supermarket—and liquor store—shelves. Three teams of Nashville entrepreneurs are making names for themselves while they make granola bars, cocktail mixers and moonshine for consumers across the country.
Monkey Brains
Try pushing oatmeal on a bunch of preschoolers and you'll get about as much buy-in as if you were serving Lavoris. But try calling it "Monkey Brains," and suddenly the baboons at your breakfast table are fighting over the first helping.
When a couple of veterans from Big Cereal found themselves living in the Nashville area, they teamed up to create their own brand of healthy oatmeal. Distinguishing their product from the rest of the instant-breakfast grainiverse with a catchy name and a dose of prebiotic fiber in every serving, Jack Slinger (a Kraft Foods alum), Chris Barroll (a Quaker alum) and Mike Robinson began manufacturing Monkey Brains two years ago in a facility near the Nashville airport.
Available in strawberry, blueberry and raspberry, Monkey Brains oatmeal is higher in fiber and lower in sugar and sodium than similar kid-focused hot cereals. But the playful branding and labeling save it from the dour demise of so many über-healthy products. The brand is available nationally in Toys R Us, Whole Foods and Smoothie Kings, as well as in local stores such as The Turnip Truck and Puckett's Grocery in Franklin.
This summer, the company extended the nascent brand with the addition of Monkey Bars granola bars. Also dosed with NutraFlora prebiotic fiber—promising to improve digestive health—and free of high-fructose corn syrup, Monkey Bars come in strawberry yogurt, blueberry yogurt and banana-peanut butter-chocolate varieties.
How do they taste? Remarkably natural, especially the banana-peanut butter-chocolate. The rolled-oat snack is coated with a chewy chocolate glaze that tastes like actual bananas—because that's what's in them. And with less sugar than most mass market brands, Monkey Bars won't leave little monkeys hanging from the chandelier.
Tilted Palm
When longtime Nashvillian Tom Laffey retired, he found himself drinking his fair share of festive beverages, but never really loving the mixers he found in the supermarket. Having bartended his way through college, Laffey knew his way around a cocktail, and he began experimenting with his own straightforward recipes for Bloody Marys and margaritas. The trick, he found, was to stick with fresh, flavorful ingredients and cut out the sticky additives–such as high-fructose corn syrup and egg whites, which are often used to make bottled mixers foam up when shaken.
A couple of years ago, he settled on some formulas that he thought might have legs—they just needed a catchy name. While Laffey and his wife were on vacation pondering the start-up business, they had a low-speed run-in with a palm tree. The incident left their convertible unscathed but nudged the palm tree about 15 degrees, and voilà, Titled Palm was born.
So far, Laffey is producing Bloody Mary, margarita and sour mixes. Tilted Palm Bloody Mary mix stands out for its aggressive red-pepper heat on the back of the tongue, layered with tangy dill pickle juice, tamarind and beef stock. Laffey recommends the tomato-based mixer for braising short ribs and marinating chicken.
Made with fresh juices and precious little else, the margarita and sour mixes are extremely fresh, with a tangy citrus pucker and without the cloying sweetness of many cocktail mixers. Unlike many larger manufacturers, Laffey makes his product just in time to ship it out, so when you crack open a new bottle, the juices are only a few days old.
Bottling the product in Alabama, Laffey works in batches that are small enough to custom label. So next time you come across a bottle of Titled Palm, the smiling caricature on the sticker (a smashing likeness of Laffey) might be dressed for the occasion—in a Titans jersey at the LP Field bars or with golf togs at a country club's 19th hole.
In Nashville, you can find Tilted Palm mixers at 3 Crow Bar, Blue Moon, Sunset Grill and Midtown Café. Kroger stores in Middle Tennessee and Kentucky recently began carrying the mixers (approximately $6.50 for 32 oz.), and by adding a trace of flavorless wine to the mixers, Tilted Palm will be eligible for sale in Tennessee liquor stores this fall.
Corsair Artisan Spirits
Watch your back, Jack. There's a new Tennessee spirit in town. After setting up shop in Kentucky a year ago, Corsair Artisan Distillery recently got the green light (thanks to a change in Tennessee state law) to start producing liquor in Davidson County. Corsair founders Darek Bell and Andrew Webber are Nashville boys, so the company is already domiciled here. But soon enough Corsair will begin producing booze here too.
Between trips to the state Capitol—to celebrate the signing of the law that allows Corsair to make liquor in Tennessee—and to the Bruichladdich Distilling Academy in Islay, Scotland, Bell and Webber have been looking at real estate. Most recently, they were ironing out the details to occupy the old Marathon Motorworks when Yazoo Brewing Co. (another boozy local brand) vacates to the Gulch in the new year.
Corsair will continue distilling bourbon and malt whiskeys in the Bowling Green facility and will dedicate a Nashville operation to unaged spirits such as gin, spiced rum, vanilla vodka and absinthe, as well as experimental and limited-release whiskeys. Inspired by autumn ales, the twice-distilled barley-and-wheat liquor is vapor-infused with allspice, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg.
Corsair is currently distributed in Tennessee and Kentucky and is available locally at Midtown Wine and Spirits, The Wine Chap, Grace's Plaza Wine & Spirits, Nashville Wine and Spirits and Grand Cru, as well as at Flyte World Dining & Wine and City House restaurants. The Patterson House restaurant also carries Corsair, and mixologists at the midtown speakeasy are currently creating recipes using pumpkin spice moonshine, which should be available later this month.
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