Lents and his business partners Ian Newton and Eli Breitburg-Smith understand this from experience, as creative people who took an uncommon path towards opening an artistically informed small business. “A philosopher, a musician, and an anthropologist walk into a bar…” could be the start of a dad joke, but it accurately describes what visitors to BSC’s distillery and “Cocktail Gallery” inside the Union Collective building in Woodberry might encounter on any given day. The company and multi-use space are the brainchild of the three aforementioned friends. Lents and Newton, BSC’s CFO, grew up together in Texas, and Lents met now-head-distiller Breitburg-Smith at Goucher College, where they studied philosophy and anthropology, respectively. After graduating in the Baltimore indie boom year 2008, the friends moved to the city to be closer to the burgeoning art and music scene, working odd jobs while participating in DIY projects such as the Baltimore Rock Opera Society.
“For some reason, all of these college graduates all at once decided that Baltimore was awesome, and everyone wanted to stick around and do stuff!” Lents recalls. “It was this huge influx of artists and dancers and musicians, and just young people with a lot of stars in their eyes who wanted to do big things with limited resources… [After a few years] I decided I wanted to open a business in Baltimore, I wanted to be part of the creative scene permanently and give back to the community.”
Although Lents originally conceptualized a nightlife business, he and his friends saw an opportunity on the production end of the alcohol world. Breitburg-Smith had developed an interest and professional experience in the arts of brewing and distilling, and so Baltimore Spirits Company was born.
The friends’ creative and academic backgrounds have informed their approach to crafting unexpected libations such as the Fumus Pumila—a smokey apple brandy that applies the artisanal techniques used to make mezcal to local ingredients. (It featured prominently in the cocktail served at Eastburn’s opening at the distillery’s exhibition space: the “Penn’s Pour.”) The Cocktail Gallery’s bar menu features classics and inventive original creations, as do their online drink recipe tutorials. The space also hosts a permanent sprawling light installation from Greg St. Pierre titled “Perspective” and rotating art exhibitions.
Until the end of October, the gallery is showing Eastburn’s work: a collection of his dreamy, mixed-media paintings in an exhibition that left the artist himself “pleasantly surprised by how well the artworks interact with the space itself.”
For now, BSC and MICA haven’t announced when the next round of awards will come around—the plan is to coordinate the award to celebrate the launch of new spirits, which are hard to predict when making sure artisanal products are up to snuff.
But for Eastburn, the timing means one very big graduation gift, for which he’s very grateful. “They’re dedicated to their craft and have committed themselves to helping other creatives launch their own passion projects. How cool is that?” he muses. “And it’s always nice meeting friends and collectors over a hand-crafted drink.”