The Dish: Cocktails and mocktails from Wildfether Distilling in Haddonfield

HADDONFIELD, New Jersey (WPVI) -- In this edition of The Dish, we're shaking things up a little bit with our very first segment on cocktails and mocktails.

We head to Wildfether Distilling in Haddonfield, Camden County - a cocktail lounge in dry town with big ideas and scratch made spirits and mixers that will inspire the home mixologist.

"Whiskey is my passion," says owner Tommy Alfinito. "That's why I started Wildfether."

His spot is in the heart of Haddonfield and Alfinito's whiskey is celebrating a milestone.

"We've been open for two years," he says. "So our oldest whiskey is two years right now."

That means he was just able to bottle his bourbon, rye whiskey, and single malt. While they waited, he got creative.

"That was kind of where the idea of the cocktail lounge was born out of," he says. "We wanted something that we could do right away. We also make vodka, gin and rum for our cocktails as well."

Everything here is scratch made.

"We make everything in house, so the bitters, the syrups," Alfinito explains. "We create the cocktails for each menu, each season."

Their lychee keen cocktail is gin based. It features lychee puree, lemon juice, simple syrup and blended basil leaves.

Their best-selling martini, the Adults Only, is bursting with bright citrus flavors.

"It has our vodka with vanilla and orange liquor, and then we also have our grapefruit rosemary syrup," says bartender Shawn Bove. "And fresh lime juice."

They also serve a collection of mocktails, including the fan-favorite called the Shooter McGavin. It's a fun twist on an Arnold Palmer with green tea, lemon juice and ginger. Then, he adds a little bit of matcha and tops it off with club soda.

Besides being able to buy all of their spirits by the bottle, Wildfether also sells to-go cocktails using their spirits and house made ingredients.

"We have a gin and tonic and pomegranate, a spicy red bell pepper cocktail with vodka," says Alfinito. "We make our own Wildfether-style Old Fashioned and our best seller is the Flower Power. It's like a floral bourbon whiskey sour. They're ready to drink and really good for BYOs and things like that."

Wildfether doesn't serve food, so their customers also BYO, food, snacks and local bites from the buzzing downtown.

"You can bring in anything you want," he says. "We're always trying support the places around us."

Alfinito says he's drawn to community.

He owned a gym in Mount Laurel for 13 years before he opened Wildfether in this historic building that dates back to 1857.

"We basically took everything down to the studs and tried to reuse all the historic things in the build out," he says.

He called it Wildfether in honor of his late mother Geri.

"There was a story about her as a kid that I always heard that that she would find a feather outside and make it into an earring and she would wear a one feather earring," Alfinito says. "She was a bit of a free spirit, so I think this kind of embodied all that."

And he channeled that spirit by opening a cocktail lounge in a dry town. Because they make everything there, including the spirits, they don't need a liquor license.