Entrepreneur seeks funding for whiskey museum

Meredith Meyer Grelli, founder of Wigle Whiskey, has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to open a Whiskey of America Museum (WAM) in Pittsburgh.

The Whiskey of America Museum will host a regional tasting room and a bottle shop

The museum will focus on the history, science and culture of American whiskey, and include interactive exhibits.

It would host a regional tasting room and bottle shop, where visitors can buy local spirits, beer, ciders and wine by the glass and/or bottle.

To raise the money for WAM, Wigle is selling a variety of items, including T-shirts, hoodies, barrels, coffee beans and more. The money Wigle raises through sales will support the design, materials and build-out exhibits for the pop-up.

The museum will open with different exhibition topics including ‘Science of Whiskey Production’ with a special focus on malting and fermentation, ‘Culture around Whiskey through Music, Art and Literature’, ‘History of American & Pittsburgh Whiskey’ and ‘Craft Movement & Cocktail Culture’.

So far, Grelli has raised US$12,532 out of the US$35,000 goal for the WAM pop-up on Kickstarter, which closes on 19 September.

The museum will start as a pop-up at a to-be-determined location in Downtown this November. Grelli hopes to find a permanent location somewhere in Pittsburgh that could open sometime in 2018.

Last month, David and Lara Beech launched a crowdfunding bid to establish Scotland’s second rum distillery on the Moray coast.