Rice, Crawfish and Craft Spirits: A Taste of the Heart of Acadiana with J.T. Meleck Distillers

Our frequent trips to the Hub City have introduced us to unique aspects of south Louisiana’s economy, particularly the dominance of sugar cane in agricultural production and, more interestingly, the relationship between crawfish and rice farming.

In Louisiana, rice and crawfish often thrive in the same fields through a farming system that takes advantage of their different seasonal needs. Farmers typically plant rice in March or April, then seed the slightly flooded fields with adult crawfish a couple of months later.  The rice plants provide crawfish with food, shelter, and a place to reproduce, while crawfish contribute nutrients to the soil through their natural waste, helping support future rice crops.  

In July or August, the rice is ready to be harvested, the fields are drained and the crawfish burrow deep into the mud to escape the summer and fall heat and survive until the fields are flooded again. Soon after harvest the fields are reflooded, triggering the crawfish to return to the surface where they feed on leftover rice stalks, decaying plant material, and tiny organisms in the water until they are harvested from January through May. Many crawfish-rice operations rotate production between fields, allowing adult crawfish from one field to seed the next.

The Meleck family has been farming rice in the Heart of Acadiana for five generations starting in 1896, when John T. Meleck planted his first rice crop in 20 acres of marshland in south Louisiana. The family encountered many problems over the next century, including repossessions but in the early 1980s brothers Mike and Mark Frugé (great-nephews of J.T. Meleck) began rebuilding the family estate by leasing family land back. Starting with crawfish, they added rice back into the equation and eventually were able to repurchase the original estate and more. Much more. Today Frugé Aquafarms encompasses 3,500 acres, with approximately 1,700 acres devoted to each of crawfish and rice production utilizing the alternate year rotation approach.

During a recent visit to the farm, Production Manager Ed Guidry described the symbiotic relationship between the two crops and discussed the generations of Guidrys who had worked alongside the Frugés. He showed us the crawfish processing line where the crop is cleaned and sorted before moving the conversation to our primary interest—the farm’s vertical integration into distilling. Since 2000, the rice market has fluctuated with prices peaking in 2008 (because of a global food crisis) followed by a prolonged slump, with prices bottoming out in 2016. This instability necessitated adding more value to their rice crop. Mike realized that there was no American spirits brand producing a 100% rice whiskey or vodka and as an added benefit, a distilling operation would satisfy the the increasingly popular farm-to-table movement. In 2017, Mike founded J.T. Meleck Distillers and it now consumes 30% of the Frugé's overall rice harvest. 

The distilling facility sits adjacent to Frugé Aquafarms and uses two stills, multiple fermentation tanks, and a large cooker, with the stills used according to the type of distillation run.  Each batch starts with two thousand pounds of Frugé rice milled locally in Crowley - the Rice Capital of America. The rice is cooked for seven hours followed by seven days of fermentation for whiskey and 14 days for vodka. In a typical week, they use 10,000 to 16,000 pounds of rice with each individual distillation run taking 10-12 hours. This operation is managed by Ed and Distiller Brett Hebert - another veteran of Frugé Farms. 

Although most of the distillery’s current production is devoted to whiskey, as evidenced by the more than 2,000 barrels aging in its barrel house, vodka was its first spirit.  The J.T. Meleck Louisiana Rice Vodka ($24.99) is distilled to 191 proof before being slowly proofed down to 80 proof for bottling. Sweetness on the nose is followed by a creamy, vanilla wafer profile. Nicely done. 

In 2022, J.T. Meleck introduced the J.T. Meleck Small Batch American Rice Whiskey ($52.99) aged nearly five years in new American oak barrels. The whiskey comes off the still around 120 proof and after the oak aging proofed down to 96 proof at bottling. They also offer the J.T. Meleck High Proof 118 Small Batch American Rice Whiskey ($67.99) that I thought was a solid option to bring home. Because of its higher proof, adding a few drops of water helps soften the alcohol and bring out the dominant butterscotch and toffee followed by more subtle vanilla and chalky baking spices. This whiskey was awarded the Best Rice Whiskey in the 2026 American Council of Tasters (ASCOT) competition helping J.T. Meleck Distillers to be designated the  2026 Craft Distiller of the Year. Try this whiskey. Cheers. 

Jean Baptiste Spirits: Certified Cajun Heritage Distilled into Louisiana Rum

Louisiana has established several programs and designations to promote agricultural products that are made, grown, or processed in the state through its Certified Louisiana Logo program. These designations include Certified Louisiana, Certified Creole, Certified Craft Beverage, Certified Farm to Table, and Certified Cajun. To qualify for the Certified Cajun logo, a product must be representative of the culture of people generally of Acadian descent, and at least 50% of the product must be made, grown, produced, manufactured, processed, or packed in Louisiana. Jean Baptiste Spirits meets these criteria. Founder Tim Westcott's family has deep Cajun roots, despite his Irish surname, and the distillery sources its molasses and sugarcane within a 12-mile radius of its Broussard facility.

After a long career supporting the oil industry, Tim Westcott drew on his homebrewing experience and nearly 200 years of family tradition to establish Jean Baptiste Spirits, focusing on one of Louisiana's principal agricultural products: sugarcane. The brand is named after Westcott's seventh great-grandfather, Jean-Baptiste Honoré d'Estréhan de Beaupré, a pioneering sugarcane producer in mid-18th-century colonial French Louisiana. This Jean-Baptiste was also a close friend of Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, often called the "Father of Louisiana." At the time of his death, he was reportedly the largest producer of tafia, an early, relatively crude form of cane spirit. According to Westcott, Jean-Baptiste's daughter, Marie Marguerite Destrehan, and her husband, Étienne de Boré, inherited one of his sugarcane farms. In 1795, de Boré perfected the process of producing granulated sugar from sugarcane in Louisiana. These innovations helped make sugarcane profitable as a commercial crop, encouraging planters throughout the state to cultivate it on a larger scale.

The distillery currently offers two expressions of rum, both developed through recipes and production processes refined over time through meticulous experimentation. Westcott experimented with different yeast cultures and varying proportions of molasses and sugarcane in the mash bill. Ultimately, he determined that traditional Norwegian farmhouse Kveik yeast offered the optimal combination of flavor and fermentation performance. He also adopted a blend of molasses and sugarcane rather than following the more conventional approach of using molasses or cane sugar alone. Because blackstrap molasses has a relatively low sugar content, adding cane sugar helps provide the fermentable sugars needed for the mash. Both ingredients are sourced locally: the sugarcane comes from the Louisiana Sugar Cane Cooperative (LASUCA) sugar mill, while the blackstrap molasses comes from the C. S. Steen Syrup Mill.

Following a fermentation period of seven to ten days, the resulting wash is reportedly drinkable on its own, a characteristic Westcott discovered during assignments in Southeast Asia. Despite this, the wash proceeds to distillation, where it is brought to 103 proof using a small hybrid pot still. The resulting spirit is clarified through a bed of crushed pecan nutshells before being reduced to 82 proof and bottled as Jean Baptiste Silver Rum Select. This is unlike any silver rum we have tasted. Its character is closer to that of a rhum agricole, with pronounced herbaceous qualities and some grassy notes. The finish is clean, making it a highly approachable rum.

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the distillery was still in its infancy, used oak barrels were in short supply. However, J.T. Meleck Distillers, a local rice distillery, was able to provide Westcott with approximately a dozen used barrels that had weathered to varying degrees. Some leaked heavily, prompting Westcott to draw on a family tradition. He remembered his grandmother describing how the inside of barrels could be coated with molasses. The molasses penetrated the wood's fibers and helped solve the leakage problem. The results proved so beneficial that coating the barrels with molasses became a standard practice at the distillery.

This process contributes to the production of Jean Baptiste Rested Rum Reposée, which begins as the Silver Rum Select which is then rested for five to seven months in the molasses-coated barrels. The rum is then finished for at least another month in specially made, lightly toasted Louisiana bald cypress casks. Before bottling, it is brought down to 86 proof. This rum evolves gradually in the glass; it begins with the sweet, herbaceous character of Silver Rum Select before transitioning to subtle baking spices and pronounced dried-fruit notes. The additional maturation and cypress finishing create a distinctive expression that makes this an excellent sipping rum.

The final detail worth noting is the distillery's distinctive, cosmetic-grade bottle, another product of the supply challenges experienced during the COVID-19 era. This substantial bottle is topped with a Maltese cross, whose eight points symbolize the eight Beatitudes. The cross is associated with the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John, an order formally dedicated to Saint John the Baptist.  The current label includes the harvest year, although Westcott plans to introduce more non-vintage releases as production increases.

Cheers.