Wigle Whiskey opening restaurant at the airport
Wigle Whiskey is opening a tasting room, bar and restaurant at Pittsburgh International Airport.
Wigle co-owner Meredith Meyer Grelli says the place — named the Wigle Whiskey Tasting Room, Bar and Restaurant — will open softly to the public Wednesday beside Gate A6 on Concourse A and hold a grand opening June 20.
At a press preview Tuesday morning, she explained how it will provide travelers with not only Wigle spirits — in the form of sample flights and cocktails — but also locally made cider and beer and national-brand drinks, plus a full, allday food menu meant to complement them.
Menu items range from breakfast fare such as Greek yogurt with granola and fresh berries ($8.99) and Belgian waffls with bourbonspiked maple syrup ($10.99) to a Greek chopped salmon salad ($9.99), a grilled veggie gyro ($10.49) and a chicken flatbread with bourbon BBQ sauce ($11.99). For dessert, there are funnel cake fries topped with powdered sugar, chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream ($7.99).
The hours are to be from 4:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. As staffers presented locally flavored cocktails such as the Aloha from the Mon — made with Wigle Landlocked spice rum and mole bitters with simple syrup and orange, lemon, lime and pineapple juices — Ms. Grelli quipped, “Who doesn’t love drinking in the morning before a flight?”
The addition — located where Quaker Steak & Lube used to be — is part of an ongoing effort to bring a sense of place to the airport’s Airmall, which recently added a Primanti Brothers restaurant and a Penn Brewery taproom. As the airport’s Director of Business Development David Storer put it, “We want travelers and visitors to know they are in Pittsburgh.”
The new Wigle restaurant will be operated by global restaurant group HMSHost. As Vice President of Business Development Bryan Loden put it, “We’re giving travelers a true taste of the local drink culture right inside the concourse.”
Customers also will get a little shot of local history: The space’s colorful decor references the 1790s Whiskey Rebellion, when early settlers who turned their rye into whiskey bristled at paying federal taxes on it.
The Strip District distillery, named for a whiskey rebel who was convicted of treason, has an on-site tasting room plus a Spring Garden Barrelhouse and Whiskey Garden, as well as tasting rooms/bottle shops Downtown and at the Ross Park Mall. The new airport location also will serve products made at Wigle’s Spring Garden sister business, Threadbare Cider & Mead.
Eventually, Ms. Grelli said, Wigle hopes to open a kiosk at the airport were travelers can buy bottles of spirits and ciders to take on their flights.
In the meantime, she said that expansion in the Strip District building that the company recently purchased will include a restaurant, too. “Going forward, we really see food as an important, integral part of the Wigle experience.”