St. George Spirits, INC.

St. George Spirits is the Alameda, California craft distillery founded in 1982 by German-born distiller Jörg Rupf — and the founding-era reference point for the entire modern American craft distilling movement, predating Tuthilltown (NY, 2003), Stranahan's (CO, 2004), Bendistillery (OR, 1996), and essentially every other modern American craft operation by over a decade. The original focus was on Old World-style eaux-de-vie — fruit brandies distilled from California-grown pears, cherries, and raspberries in the traditional South German and Alsatian style — which made St. George the first modern American craft distillery to commercially produce European-tradition fruit brandies at meaningful scale.

The current Alameda location is among the most architecturally distinct working distillery facilities in any American city: a 65,000-square-foot former military airplane hangar on the Alameda Naval Air Station property, with the high ceilings, exposed steel structure, and the kind of working-industrial atmosphere that essentially no purpose-built craft distillery can match. The setting itself has become inseparable from the brand identity — visiting St. George means visiting an actual decommissioned naval air station hangar with stills, fermenters, and aging tanks arrayed across the vast interior space.

The Lance Winters hire in 1996 is one of the most consequential personnel decisions in modern American craft distilling history. Rupf hired Winters — a former U.S. Navy nuclear engineer who had transitioned to brewing at a nearby Hayward brewpub — as head distiller after Winters brought a bottle of his homemade whiskey as a "liquid resume" to the initial interview. Winters has since become one of the most editorially respected master distillers in American craft spirits, with his work at St. George anchoring the brand's expansion from eau-de-vie specialist into the comprehensive cross-category craft-distilling operation it is today.

The product range is genuinely unmatched in scope. St. George produces the Hangar 1 Vodka line (originally launched in 2002 by Rupf and Winters with Ansley Coale of Germain-Robin, before subsequent ownership changes — the original distillery operation continued separately at St. George), Breaking & Entering Bourbon (launched 2011 — a blend of sourced bourbon and St. George's own whiskey, named for the brand's deliberate honesty about the sourced-and-blended production model), St. George Single Malt Whiskey, St. George Botanivore Gin, St. George Terroir Gin (a juniper-and-foraged-California-botanical-forward gin), St. George Absinthe Verte (one of the first legal American absinthes after the 2007 federal legalization), St. George Pear Brandy (the original 1982-vintage product line), St. George California Reserve Agricole Rum, and an extensive seasonal-and-limited bottling program. The Alameda visitor experience runs through the airplane-hangar working facility with tours and tastings that span the entire 40+-year St. George product portfolio.