Chasing the Green Fairy at Gate Eleven
Giddy-up, says Hemingway. Stop stalling.
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Walk straight through the front doors at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, held head high, heart open, screwing your courage to the sticking point, as Lady Macbeth once said.
You're about to encounter something, or Someone, quite ... notorious.
Here at the old train tracks, you'll find Gate Eleven Distillery, one of the best local distilleries you've probably never heard of.
And inside?
Some very special people ... and spirits.
First, meet Bill and Wanda Lee, the husband-wife owners of Gate Eleven Distillery — named after the nearby train track — who have built one of the South's largest portfolios of small-batch and award-winning spirits.
They've done so using homemade, handcrafted stills.
And botanicals they greenhouse-grow themselves.
Gate Eleven distills and sells its own vodka, gin, rum, whiskey, agave.
But there's one particular spirit we're after today.
Once banned from the US and Europe, it carries a reputation for the spectral. Oscar Wilde compared it to a sunset. Hemingway drank it. Marilyn Manson did, too. Possibly, probably Poe. Maybe Van Gogh. Definitely Baudelaire.
It is the drink of decadence, licorice and supernatural.
"An aperitif capable of creating black-outs, pass-outs, hallucinations and bizarre behavior," wrote Jane Ciabattari in the BBC.
Yes, here at the Choo-Choo's Gate Eleven, we're looking for the muse.
The green fairy.
Absinthe.
Absinthe is part myth, romance and overexaggerated history, an anise-flavored drink that has bewildered and bewitched folks across centuries and continents.
"We infuse wormwood, fennel and anise and angelic root as our primary botanicals," Wanda said. "We distill that and get clear spirits."
The green part comes from a botanical infusion that happens post-distillation.
"Lemon balm and hyssop give us that green color," said Wanda.
In 18th century Paris, five o'clock was known as the Green Hour: cafes full of Parisians with glasses of absinthe.
Has any drink been so tied to artistic creation ... and personal destruction? (To understand why it was called a "demon" in a bottle, here's a good history lesson on the 'absinthe murders' and the real culprit behind absinthe-influenced violence.)
"Absinthe solidified or destroyed friendships and created visions and dream-like states that filtered into artistic work," Ciabattari wrote. "It shaped Symbolism, Surrealism, Modernism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Cubism."
And now, it's about to shape Food as a Verb-ism.
Earlier this winter, after years of experimentation, Gate Eleven released their own green absinthe spirit.
Infame.
"Tongue-in-cheek to the notorious reputation of this spirit," Bill smiled.
"Do you want to taste it?" Wanda asked.
From the periphery, Hemingway's spirit heartily slaps us on the back ...
"Yes."
In 2017, Bill — a 73-year-old master distiller who calls himself "equal parts entrepreneur and mad scientist" — retired from a career in chemical engineering for the biofuels industry. In the Midwest, he built and ran other distilleries.
"I crafted the original Prairie Organic Vodka," he said.
Then, something began calling him home.
A seventh-generation Tennessean and Baylor School grad whose great-grandfather was a miner in Sequatchie County mines, Bill moved back into his grandparent's old home in Soddy Daisy.
Near the banks of Big Soddy Creek, he began constructing the backyard still that would ultimately produce the award-winning Gate Eleven gin.
"We're like the moonshiners," said Bill. "Self-made."
Meanwhile, Wanda, a 73-year-old retired schoolteacher, began growing the hothouse herbs needed for precise distilling.
In 2018, the Lees formally opened Gate Eleven inside the Choo-Choo.
Soon, their spirits began racking up awards.
Gate Eleven was nominated by USA Today as Best New Craft Distillery.
Gate Eleven's gin won a SIP Platinum award and double gold at the San Francisco World Spirits and gold at the UK Gin Masters competitions.
"Our prize-winning flagship," he said.
Gate Eleven earned a spot on the highly-visited Tennessee Whiskey Trail.
And the Infame absinthe was shortlisted by Garden & Gun for its annual Best in the South edition.
Ahem, coughs Hemingway. Stop stalling.
"Would you like to taste it?" Wanda asks.
The Green Hour had arrived.
Quite ceremonially, Bill and Wanda began performing what felt a a Southern Gothic tea ceremony.
She carried out a large decanter of the coldest ice water.
"As ice cold as you can get," said Wanda.
Little square sugar cubes, white like wintertime.
And the smallest of glasses.
"This is a louche ceremony," Bill said. "It gets you in touch with your muse."
The ice water drip-dropped out onto the sugar cube, which then slowly sugar-dropped into the absinthe.
Wanda poured.
The muse smiled.
We tasted.
We smiled, too.
It was electric, very cold and earthy, dangerously enveloping, a new sort of licorice experience far more invigorating than the candy-taste.
It was more rebellious than wine, more transcendent than whiskey, more inspiring than beer.
What, exactly, is this stuff's power?
Most certainly, the reputation for hallucinations — one thinks of Tipper Gore, Joe McCarthy, the Red Scare — comes not from wormwood, but from excess.
You drink two bottles of this stuff, you're gonna get sick while cultivating, to borrow Axl Rose, an appetite for destruction.
"Contemporary analysis indicates that the chemical thujone in wormwood was present in such minute quantities in properly distilled absinthe as to cause little psychoactive effect," the BBC reports. "It's more like that the damage was done by severe alcohol poisoning from drinking twelve to twenty shots a day."
"Still, the mystique remains."
Speaking of stills, Bill invites us upstairs, behind the curtain, where all the distillation happens.
We climb the stairs to a second story that overlooks the bar; Bill's built a laboratory of sorts, five-stills, all homemade, using reclaimed and fabricated parts.
There's even an old keg or two from Monkeytown repurposed here.
This is the master distiller's lair.
He walks us by each still, pointing out hydrometers and copper tubing. It is scientific and spirited, a beautifully complex nod to those moonshiners of old.
"Our secret sauce?" he said. "The way we use copper in all our hand-built stills."
He describes the copper and bubbling science and what sounds like reverse osmosis to me, but my mind — and tongue — are still downstairs, with the absinthe and green fairy.
I hear his words, but come on, I'm a writer, and you just poured me absinthe. I barely passed chemistry in high school, much less after a louche ceremony.
Thankfully, Gate Eleven offers tours of its distillery, with a special one coming soon. More on that in a sec.
Done with the tour, we stopped by the bar for more. The bartender cooked us up a drink she called Lilith's Garden, with absinthe, Topo Chico and a few other surprises.
For the fireworks, she added a touch of burning sage sitting in a raspberry. Van Gogh would have loved it.
"This place is so cool," the bartender whispered to us. "I love coming to work here."
Finally, my absinthe-inspired vision arrives.
Gate Eleven is a Chattanooga-born company built by a couple from Soddy Daisy that began, quite literally, on the creek banks with homemade stills.
And they've turned this moonshiner ingenuity into an award-winning line of spirits. (Visit Gate Eleven or purchase them online.)
Folks talk of local food. What of local spirits?
"Locavore meets local pour," Bill says with a grin.
Our vision: Chattanooga supports its own. Gate Eleven becomes a beloved Chattanooga distillery known, and enjoyed, by many in this town.
On Monday, March 5, it's National Absinthe Day.
The Lees are offering a special event: a distillery tour, absinthe-history lesson and tastings, including a private louche ceremony.
Tickets can be found here. This Wednesday, all members of The Table will receive a discount code for a reduced ticket price.
We hope many of you can come.
No doubt, Someone else will be there, too.
Story ideas, questions, feedback? Interested in partnering with us? Email: david@foodasaverb.com
This story is 100% human generated; no AI chatbot was used in the creation of this content.
(This story was edited at 9:06 am on Jan. 11, 2026 to correct a misspelling.)
food as a verb thanks our sustaining partner:
food as a verb thanks our story sponsor:
Mapleleaf Realco
Walk straight through the front doors at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, held head high, heart open, screwing your courage to the sticking point, as Lady Macbeth once said.
You're about to encounter something, or Someone, quite ... notorious.
Here at the old train tracks, you'll find Gate Eleven Distillery, one of the best local distilleries you've probably never heard of.
And inside?
Some very special people ... and spirits.
First, meet Bill and Wanda Lee, the husband-wife owners of Gate Eleven Distillery — named after the nearby train track — who have built one of the South's largest portfolios of small-batch and award-winning spirits.
They've done so using homemade, handcrafted stills.
And botanicals they greenhouse-grow themselves.
Gate Eleven distills and sells its own vodka, gin, rum, whiskey, agave.
But there's one particular spirit we're after today.
Once banned from the US and Europe, it carries a reputation for the spectral. Oscar Wilde compared it to a sunset. Hemingway drank it. Marilyn Manson did, too. Possibly, probably Poe. Maybe Van Gogh. Definitely Baudelaire.
It is the drink of decadence, licorice and supernatural.
"An aperitif capable of creating black-outs, pass-outs, hallucinations and bizarre behavior," wrote Jane Ciabattari in the BBC.
Yes, here at the Choo-Choo's Gate Eleven, we're looking for the muse.
The green fairy.
Absinthe.
Absinthe is part myth, romance and overexaggerated history, an anise-flavored drink that has bewildered and bewitched folks across centuries and continents.
"We infuse wormwood, fennel and anise and angelic root as our primary botanicals," Wanda said. "We distill that and get clear spirits."
The green part comes from a botanical infusion that happens post-distillation.
"Lemon balm and hyssop give us that green color," said Wanda.
In 18th century Paris, five o'clock was known as the Green Hour: cafes full of Parisians with glasses of absinthe.
Has any drink been so tied to artistic creation ... and personal destruction? (To understand why it was called a "demon" in a bottle, here's a good history lesson on the 'absinthe murders' and the real culprit behind absinthe-influenced violence.)
"Absinthe solidified or destroyed friendships and created visions and dream-like states that filtered into artistic work," Ciabattari wrote. "It shaped Symbolism, Surrealism, Modernism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Cubism."
And now, it's about to shape Food as a Verb-ism.
Earlier this winter, after years of experimentation, Gate Eleven released their own green absinthe spirit.
Infame.
"Tongue-in-cheek to the notorious reputation of this spirit," Bill smiled.
"Do you want to taste it?" Wanda asked.
From the periphery, Hemingway's spirit heartily slaps us on the back ...
"Yes."
In 2017, Bill — a 73-year-old master distiller who calls himself "equal parts entrepreneur and mad scientist" — retired from a career in chemical engineering for the biofuels industry. In the Midwest, he built and ran other distilleries.
"I crafted the original Prairie Organic Vodka," he said.
Then, something began calling him home.
A seventh-generation Tennessean and Baylor School grad whose great-grandfather was a miner in Sequatchie County mines, Bill moved back into his grandparent's old home in Soddy Daisy.
Near the banks of Big Soddy Creek, he began constructing the backyard still that would ultimately produce the award-winning Gate Eleven gin.
"We're like the moonshiners," said Bill. "Self-made."
Meanwhile, Wanda, a 73-year-old retired schoolteacher, began growing the hothouse herbs needed for precise distilling.
In 2018, the Lees formally opened Gate Eleven inside the Choo-Choo.
Soon, their spirits began racking up awards.
Gate Eleven was nominated by USA Today as Best New Craft Distillery.
Gate Eleven's gin won a SIP Platinum award and double gold at the San Francisco World Spirits and gold at the UK Gin Masters competitions.
"Our prize-winning flagship," he said.
Gate Eleven earned a spot on the highly-visited Tennessee Whiskey Trail.
And the Infame absinthe was shortlisted by Garden & Gun for its annual Best in the South edition.
Ahem, coughs Hemingway. Stop stalling.
"Would you like to taste it?" Wanda asks.
The Green Hour had arrived.
Quite ceremonially, Bill and Wanda began performing what felt a a Southern Gothic tea ceremony.
She carried out a large decanter of the coldest ice water.
"As ice cold as you can get," said Wanda.
Little square sugar cubes, white like wintertime.
And the smallest of glasses.
"This is a louche ceremony," Bill said. "It gets you in touch with your muse."
The ice water drip-dropped out onto the sugar cube, which then slowly sugar-dropped into the absinthe.
Wanda poured.
The muse smiled.
We tasted.
We smiled, too.
It was electric, very cold and earthy, dangerously enveloping, a new sort of licorice experience far more invigorating than the candy-taste.
It was more rebellious than wine, more transcendent than whiskey, more inspiring than beer.
What, exactly, is this stuff's power?
Most certainly, the reputation for hallucinations — one thinks of Tipper Gore, Joe McCarthy, the Red Scare — comes not from wormwood, but from excess.
You drink two bottles of this stuff, you're gonna get sick while cultivating, to borrow Axl Rose, an appetite for destruction.
"Contemporary analysis indicates that the chemical thujone in wormwood was present in such minute quantities in properly distilled absinthe as to cause little psychoactive effect," the BBC reports. "It's more like that the damage was done by severe alcohol poisoning from drinking twelve to twenty shots a day."
"Still, the mystique remains."
Speaking of stills, Bill invites us upstairs, behind the curtain, where all the distillation happens.
We climb the stairs to a second story that overlooks the bar; Bill's built a laboratory of sorts, five-stills, all homemade, using reclaimed and fabricated parts.
There's even an old keg or two from Monkeytown repurposed here.
This is the master distiller's lair.
He walks us by each still, pointing out hydrometers and copper tubing. It is scientific and spirited, a beautifully complex nod to those moonshiners of old.
"Our secret sauce?" he said. "The way we use copper in all our hand-built stills."
He describes the copper and bubbling science and what sounds like reverse osmosis to me, but my mind — and tongue — are still downstairs, with the absinthe and green fairy.
I hear his words, but come on, I'm a writer, and you just poured me absinthe. I barely passed chemistry in high school, much less after a louche ceremony.
Thankfully, Gate Eleven offers tours of its distillery, with a special one coming soon. More on that in a sec.
Done with the tour, we stopped by the bar for more. The bartender cooked us up a drink she called Lilith's Garden, with absinthe, Topo Chico and a few other surprises.
For the fireworks, she added a touch of burning sage sitting in a raspberry. Van Gogh would have loved it.
"This place is so cool," the bartender whispered to us. "I love coming to work here."
Finally, my absinthe-inspired vision arrives.
Gate Eleven is a Chattanooga-born company built by a couple from Soddy Daisy that began, quite literally, on the creek banks with homemade stills.
And they've turned this moonshiner ingenuity into an award-winning line of spirits. (Visit Gate Eleven or purchase them online.)
Folks talk of local food. What of local spirits?
"Locavore meets local pour," Bill says with a grin.
Our vision: Chattanooga supports its own. Gate Eleven becomes a beloved Chattanooga distillery known, and enjoyed, by many in this town.
On Monday, March 5, it's National Absinthe Day.
The Lees are offering a special event: a distillery tour, absinthe-history lesson and tastings, including a private louche ceremony.
Tickets can be found here. This Wednesday, all members of The Table will receive a discount code for a reduced ticket price.
We hope many of you can come.
No doubt, Someone else will be there, too.
Story ideas, questions, feedback? Interested in partnering with us? Email: david@foodasaverb.com
This story is 100% human generated; no AI chatbot was used in the creation of this content.
(This story was edited at 9:06 am on Jan. 11, 2026 to correct a misspelling.)
Food as a verb thanks our story sponsor:
Food as a Verb Thanks our sustaining partner:
Food as a verb thanks our story sponsor:
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