St. George Spirits is where American craft distilling started. In 1982 a German-born lawyer named Jörg Rupf, raised in the Black Forest eau-de-vie tradition, opened a distillery in Alameda, California to make fruit brandy from the state's orchards — at a time when almost nobody in the country knew what eau-de-vie was, and there were only a handful of small distilleries in the entire United States. Pear Brandy was the first thing he made, and it's still the flagship. Rupf became known as the patron saint of American eau-de-vie, and the operation he built now occupies a 65,000-square-foot former naval air station hangar on Alameda Point with a view of San Francisco Bay, run by master distiller Lance Winters and head distiller Dave Smith. The philosophy is restless: every spirit starts on a lab still, and what makes it to the bottle has to be different from and better than what already exists. The results have reshaped categories more than once. St. George Absinthe Verte was the first legal American absinthe in nearly a century when it launched in 2007. Terroir Gin bottled the smell of Mount Tamalpais — Douglas fir, California bay laurel, coastal sage — and helped define the "new western" style; Botanivore and Dry Rye Gin round out the trio. The American Single Malt, distilled since 1997, is one of the category's founding bottlings, released in annual Lots. Around them sit Bruto Americano, Green Chile Vodka, the Aqua Perfecta fruit brandies and liqueurs, California Reserve Apple Brandy, NOLA Coffee Liqueur, and a steady stream of experiments. Forty years on, still ahead of everyone.

Browse our full St. George Spirits collection with fast nationwide shipping delivered straight to your door.