Letters, Visits & the Working Kettle House
Shepherdstown, West Virginia · desk answered Monday to Thursday
The Vesper & Clove kettle house is a two-room workshop on Kettle Row, a short walk from the river landing. We keep a letters desk for the questions that a printed batch line cannot answer: which tin suits a particular household, how a tasting flight should be sequenced, and whether a collection can be set aside for a date months away.
Reaching the desks
Letters desk
vesperandclove.tins@gmail.com
Batch notes, gift tin sizing, tasting flight questions and rescheduling of collection holds.
Workshop address
Vesper & Clove Pastille Works
118 Kettle Row
Shepherdstown, WV 25443
Counter hours
Monday to Thursday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. eastern time.
Friday is a kettle day, so the counter stays closed while the pans are working.
Visits
The curing room and slab are shown by appointment for groups of four or fewer. Write ahead and mention which collection you would like to see poured.
About the confectionery
The house began in 1974 when a druggist's daughter carried a lozenge recipe two doors down and started boiling sugar on a two-burner stove. Fifty-odd years later the equipment has grown no larger than one pair of hands can manage: a copper pan, a marble slab, a brass star die, a curing room with slate shelves, and a batch book that is now eleven volumes deep.
What we make is deliberately narrow. Floral pastilles for the tin on the hall table. Honey-lemon lozenges for the coat pocket. Anise squares for the after-dinner tray. Wintergreen mints for the dish that sits beside the front door. Everything else rotates through the seasons, and the showcase ledger is where each collection is filed when it comes back around.
How a batch line reads
A printed line such as Archive line 04-A · violet and rose pastilles · cured 21 days · 168 tins filled by hand is written in four parts: the collection code, the kettle date series, the cure time on the slab, and the number of tins counted out. Ask for a full ledger entry by that code and the letters desk will send the whole page.
Questions the desk hears most
Can a collection be held for a later date?
Yes. Write with the collection name, the number of tins and the month you have in mind. Holds are placed in the batch book and confirmed by reply, and floral pastilles are the easiest to set aside because they gain rather than lose character in the tin.
Do you post tasting notes for a collection that has rotated out?
The archive section of the showcase keeps the flavour notes for retired collections, and the letters desk can send a two-page craft sheet with the older batch entries quoted in full.
Are group tastings possible?
Small tastings are arranged on weekday afternoons in the front room, using the palate wheel to order six packets from herbal through citrus. Write first; the room holds eight chairs.
Back to the full showcase ledger, or read the ingredient and craft advisory before writing about a household with a known sensitivity.