Cocktail and bourbon fans who might typically beeline for One Flew South when killing time at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport now have a stop in Concourse B to add to their itinerary. ASW (American Spirit Works), which bills itself as “Atlanta’s hometown distillery,” has just opened its Flights & Bites tasting room and restaurant. The nine-year-old distillery joins a small but growing cadre of craft distillers to land a location inside a U.S. airport, including Boston Harbor Distillery at Boston Logan International and Wigle Whiskey at Pittsburgh International.
“We wanted a location with very high foot traffic in Atlanta,” ASW co-founder and CEO Jim Chasteen says. And it’s safe to say they’ve found it with an outpost in the busiest airport in the world.
Operated in partnership with hospitality management company Delaware North, Flights & Bites offers a concise menu of Southern-inspired dishes—pulled pork and waffles, a charcuterie board, a burger topped with pimento cheese and fried onions—but the spotlight here is on the spirits. A large L-shaped bar, finished in warm wood paneling, anchors the room, offering an oasis amid the airport’s bustle. A miniature copper pot still—it’s for educational purposes only, as the TSA frowns on active distillation at airports—serves as the centerpiece of the back bar, surrounded by shelving made from copper pipes.
In addition to cocktails made with ASW’s flagship Fiddler Bourbon and Resurgens Rye—not to mention its Bustletown Vodka and Winterville Gin—travelers can taste through curated flights that showcase the distillery’s single-malt whiskeys and various barrel finishes, as well as limited-edition releases. “It’s a great way for consumers to get to know us and for us to get feedback as people fly in and taste,” Chasteen says.
The new spot is the latest milestone in what’s so far been a banner year for ASW. In April, a rendition of its Fiddler Encore bourbon finished in casks made from Georgia-grown oak placed among the top five small-batch bourbons at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. In June, the distillery released an eight-year-old edition of its Fiddler Chin Music bourbon, aged with the addition of charred-and-split baseball bats, in collaboration with the Atlanta Braves. Ever since ASW debuted its tasting room just outside Truist Park in 2021—the same season the Braves last won the World Series—Fiddler Chin Music has become an annual tradition. Braves’ president and CEO Derek Schiller coined the name. “He said, ‘You know what goes great with baseball and a fiddle is chin music—a high-and-tight pitch,” ASW co-founder Charlie Thompson says.
ASW also operates a tasting room (and ages its barrels) at its Whiskey Exchange location in Atlanta’s West End neighborhood, along the Beltline. The primary distillery is located in south Buckhead, where its twin hand-hammered copper pot stills are capable of producing up to five hundred barrels of whiskey annually. That’s also where ASW’s founders struck up a collaboration with another Atlanta-grown company, Big Green Egg, to create a bourbon finished with the addition of oak staves that have been toasted and charred on the grills. “Their world headquarters is a couple of exits north of ours, and it turns out a lot of people on their team are pretty big whiskey fans,” Chasteen says. “Their HR guys were even out there toasting staves for us.”
Now with those offerings available to airport travelers, the aim is to introduce more people than ever to ASW’s local flavor. “There’s a pretty high percentage of travelers who end up sitting in Atlanta for a couple of hours,” Chasteen says. “They’re able to get pours of our consistent products, but also some pretty special things.”
