Meet the co-founders
NORA GANLEY-ROPER
Production & Operations Czar
Nora got her start in the wine and spirits industry as a Sales Manager at Astor Wine & Spirits, one of the country’s top spirits retailers. Her love of wine gradually translated into a deep fascination with spirits, especially the growing potential of American whiskey from all around the country. She left Astor to work in operations for several startups, learning how to build and grow early-stage companies. Now, Nora handles all production and operations for Lost Lantern. She is half of the Lost Lantern tasting panel.
ADAM POLONSKI
Whiskey Cask Hunter
Before co-founding Lost Lantern, Adam was a Senior Whisky Specialist at Whisky Advocate, the country’s largest and oldest whiskey magazine. He has written extensively about whiskies from around the world, with a particular focus on new American distilleries. Adam works with distilleries to source unique and special casks for Lost Lantern. He is half of the Lost Lantern tasting panel.
Who We Are
We’re whiskey nerds, and we’re building an independent bottler that talks to whiskey nerds. We love hunting down whiskies that people haven’t discovered yet and evangelizing the distilleries we are most excited about. We love to tell a good story, and we care deeply about flavor. Ultimately, we just want to share what makes the world of American whiskey so exciting.
Our Mission
Shining a light on the independent spirit is our tagline. It’s also our mission. That means we’ll spend the time to truly understand what’s going on in American whiskey, in every corner of the United States. We’ll chase down unique and exciting whiskies that taste different than what you’re familiar with. We’ll tell the stories of these distilleries and why what they’re doing worth your attention. And we’ll be fully transparent because, for us, sourcing whiskey is the whole point. We don’t want you to think we distilled it: we want you to know who did, and why you should care so that you can discover them for yourselves! And our whiskey will always be presented in an unadulterated format: non-chill-filtered, natural color, often cask strength. That’s the way we want it, and we figure that’s probably how you want it to.
We aim to be completely transparent, and if you want additional information or technical details on any of our releases, please reach out and we’d be happy to share
Keep Up to Date With Our Blog
The Lost Lantern Spring 2021 Single Cask Collection
The Spring Collection shines a light on whiskies that represent three rapidly emerging regional styles: Southwest single malt, Texas bourbon, and cool-climate rye. Each of these whiskies are cask strength, non-chill-filtered, and labeled with full transparency on where they come from—and why we’re excited about that cask and distillery.
Our Stance On Small Barrels
Up until now, everything we’ve released was matured in barrels that were at least 53 gallons, some of them even larger. That’s true for both our first four single casks and all twelve barrels that went into our American Vatted Malt.
That’s changing with our next single malt release. Our Spring 2021 Single Cask Collection includes three mesquite-smoked single malt whiskies from Tucson, Arizona-based Whiskey Del Bac. We’re incredibly excited about all of them: each one is a unique take on a rapidly emerging style of American whiskey, and they deeply reflect where they come from: the Sonoran Desert, one of the very hottest regions in the United States. All three whiskies were aged, not in 53-gallon barrels, but in 15-gallon barrels.
The New York Times — American Whiskeys Find Their Middlemen
Some couples bond over music, movies or travel. For Nora Ganley-Roper and Adam Polonski, it was Scotch whisky.
When they started dating six years ago, Ms. Ganley-Roper, a manager at Astor Wines & Spirits in Manhattan, and Mr. Polonski, a senior writer at Whisky Advocate magazine, found they were both big admirers of Scotland’s independent bottlers, which purchase barrels of whisky from single-malt distilleries and sell them under their own label, sometimes after blending them together.
