Each year, VIP Alexandria Magazine accepts nominations and selects the newest class of Most Interesting Men. This year, VIP partnered with The Animal Welfare League of Alexandria. Each "gentleman" was photographed with an adoptable dog seeking its forever home. We are proud to announce that all dogs featured in VIP have been adopted. Special thank you to our 2023 class of Most Interesting Men for helping us support this amazing charity!
Story by LIESEL SCHMIDT | Photography by JONATHAN THORPE | Benefitting the ANIMAL WELFARE LEAUGE OF ALEXANDRIA | Sponsored by TING
“Twenty years in government contracting taught me a great love of whiskey.” That’s the explanation you’ll get from Scott Harris when you ask how he landed on the inspiration for leaving his career to become a whiskey maker in 2009. 14 years later, Catoctin Creek has gone from being the tiny company he and his wife created to a well-known name in the world of small-batch distilleries. “I love that I make whiskey for a living and I love that I get to work with my wife every day,” Harris says.
As much as he loves his work, it can be stressful. Harris’s greatest respite is getting outdoors, either in the garden he’s been cultivating for the past 25 years or through one of his more recent passions: birding. “I love bird watching and traveling to some interesting places to do it,” he says, going on to describe an 11-day trek through the jungles and mountaintop cloud forests of Oaxaca, Mexico. “It’s a great contrast to my job and a nice escape from the stresses that come from it. I get to be out in the peace of nature and relax.”
Harris is also an avid traveler and loves to take trips with his wife of 30 years and their sons, who began traveling with their parents as toddlers. “Literally putting a pin in a map is a great hobby when you have the time and money to do it,” he says. Growing up an Army brat, he was born in the Rhineland-Pfalz region of Germany and spent the first seven years of his life there. He now tries to return every year to visit the country that holds so much nostalgia.
WHY HE SUPPORTS AWLA...
"The work that they do is incredible. There are so many animals that are uncared for and unloved, and finding homes for them is important work. We saw that when we went to a shelter to find our dog. All the animals there [were] so sad." - Scott