Damson plums

[abe]

I am looking for reliable and quality sources of fruit for distillation (orchards, individual growers, suppliers),  we are located in Clifton NJ and I am primarily looking for damson plums,  If anyone can help pointing me into right direction or share their suppliers' info, I would greatly appreciate that.

Cheers!

Abe.

[Hudson bay distillers]

where are you from . i may be able to help you . 

tim 

 

[JBillyB]

I am also interested, I'm in eastern Va.

[Silk City Distillers]

Also in NJ and went down this road.  Coming from a Polish background I thought, why not?

Except something like 95% of the plums in this country are grown on the west coast, and nearly all of it are Asian varietals.

Anyone growing around here demands fairly high prices - they are selling at a premium at farmers markets.  I never found a way to get the numbers to work, would need to get $75-100 a bottle at retail for it to even begin to make sense.

Might be easier to find someone willing to plant an acre for you, especially if you are looking for European varietals common in distilling.

I’d love to do grappa as well, but also the wrong coast.

[CountySeat]

There is a farm out in the Pittsburgh area - we were going to run a test batch but they lost their plums last year due to weather. I agree that the prices made it virtually impossible to sell for a reasonable price. 

[abe]

9 hours ago, CountySeat said:

There is a farm out in the Pittsburgh area - we were going to run a test batch but they lost their plums last year due to weather. I agree that the prices made it virtually impossible to sell for a reasonable price. 

Do you recall the name of that farm?

[CountySeat]

It was Shenot Farm in Wexford, PA. 

https://www.shenotfarm.com/

[bostonapothecary]

I suspect that the future of fruit eau-de-vie's and premium fruit liqueurs is extremely bright, but very narrow and exclusive. They are increasingly only going to work for farms with agro tourism programs that can sell pretty much their entire batch capturing the full retail mark up. I bet the opportunities for a lot of regular distillers will just be consulting and equipment lending for the much smaller true farmer-distillers.