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 engi…