One Man’s Quest to Make 20-Year-Old Rum in Just Six Days
Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride is one of Bryan Davis’ lodestars; another is H. G. Wells’ mad scientist novel The Island of Dr. Moreau.Joe Pugliese
From the outside, the Lost Spirits Distillery is just another boxy, early-20th-century building along the frayed edge of downtown Los Angeles. At first the inside appears similarly uninspired: deep and unfinished, littered with cardboard boxes, plumbing fittings, spools of wire, inscrutable items made of copper, a forklift. The usual crap.
But what’s this then? A heavy black curtain bisects the industrial space from floor to ceiling, nearly from the front door to the back. Bryan Davis, the distillery’s founder and co-owner, pulls aside some folds and beckons me in.
