Forget that cloying fruit brandy you clandestinely sipped from your grandparents’ liquor cabinet. From Austria to Mexico, a new cadre of eau de vie artisans is taking this classic spirit to new heights. Katja Scharnagl has been leading the charge in the United States, introducing drinkers to these captivating brandies from her role as beverage director at Koloman, a Franco-Austrian restaurant in Manhattan. Behind the bar, Scharnagl has curated a list of over 60 eaux de vie from around the world into what she believes is the largest selection of fruit brandies in North America. 

Eau de vie (also known as schnapps) is a rising trend, but Scharnagl’s appreciation runs deeply, stemming from her own Austrian heritage, and memories of her grandfather making apricot schnapps. She’s also drawn to the magic in how the spirit is produced. “Schnapps is the essence of an ingredient, distilled. It’s alchemy—a way of preserving something to make a perfect product.”

The traditional distillation process is straightforward: Fresh fruit is fermented, distilled (often twice), diluted to a drinkable proof, then bottled. Historically, it was made from ripe fruits left over from the harvest, which were not always in the most pristine condition. Koloman’s selection showcases only producers who are diligent when it comes to quality. 

“Everybody has their signature fruit,” said Scharnagl. Apples, pears, plums, and peaches are popular choices, but some modern makers are broadening the spectrum with tropical fruits, veggies, and even roots. She singles out Austrian master distiller Hans Reisetbauer, who uses only perfectly ripe and unblemished ingredients in his brandies, as a vanguard in the category. “Only the best fruits lead to the best schnapps,” he explains. This fruit-first approach also means the resulting spirits express the unique aroma and flavor profile of each harvest. Enjoyed neat or in a cocktail, Scharnagl’s top-tier selection is proof that eau de vie can provide an unexpected and elegant drinking experience.

Reisetbauer Ginger, Austria 

The purity and intensity of this unusual eau de vie satisfy the palates of even the most fervent ginger fans. Hans Reisetbauer rigorously developed a proprietary technique to convert ginger root starches to sugars, requiring more than 77 pounds of ginger to make just one liter of the seriously bold and spicy spirit.

Branchwater Black Currant Brandy, United States 

New York’s Hudson Valley is an ocean away from Austria, but Reisetbauer’s influence looms large—particularly at the distillery he designed at Branchwater Farms. There, owner Kevin Pike allows his black currant brandies to mature for a year in stainless steel tanks before it is released to the market.

Capreolus Distillery 1000 Trees Apple Eau de Vie, England 

Barney Wilczak sources the fruit for this spirit from a historic orchard with 1,000 heirloom varieties. Imagine the best apples you’ve ever eaten, multiply that flavor by 1,000, then distill it down to its purest essence. The result is spiced and a little sweet, with a distinct and nuanced apple flavor.

Rochelt Wachau Apricot, Austria 

The late Günter Rochelt began making eaux de vie in his garage in the ’70s; since then, his family has carried on the tradition at their distillery. Ripe apricots grown along the banks of the Danube enliven this version. Scharnagl pours it tableside to show off the stunning green glass cruet inspired by the traditional Tyrolean “pincer bottle.”

Edenico Guayaba Eau de Vie #1, Mexico 

A native of Burgundy, Arnaud Fressonnet chose prickly pear, guava, plantain, and mango for his brandies, a result of a collaboration with fifth-generation Mexican rum destiladores Rommel and Alex Krassel. The trio balances their brandies’ sweetness and acidity with fruits at different stages of ripeness, before fermenting with Champagne yeast.

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The Brandy Crusta is a local New Orleans cocktail invented by bartender Joseph Santini, who worked at the St. Louis Hotel in the 1840s. The drink became a cult favorite after Jerry Thomas, the first bartender to publish a cocktail book, put it in his seminal 1862 guide. “What is notable about this drink is the introduction of lemon juice,” writes Neal Bodenheimer, founder of New Orleans bar Cure and author of a book by the same name, Cure: New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix ’Em. “This was not common practice at the time, and it set the stage for other delicious, important drinks like the sidecar and the daisy (an inspiration for the margarita).”

For a horse’s neck lemon twist (named for its resemblance to the curves of a horse’s neck), Bodenheimer recommends using a Y peeler to cut away the entire peel of the citrus in one long spiral. Then, coil it along the interior of your serving glass, drape the top over the rim if desired, and voilà—a perfectly elegant garnish for your cocktail.

Adapted from Cure: New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix ’Em by Neal Bodenheimer and Emily Timberlake, Published by Abrams. Photography © 2022 by Denny Culbert.

Featured in: “10 Essential New Orleans Cocktail Recipes.”

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Along with the bloody mary, this creamy brandy milk punch is a New Orleans brunch mainstay (and one of our favorite holiday tipples). It features an aromatic aged brandy named after Napoleon Bonaparte, but any good-quality brandy or cognac will do.

Featured in “New Orleans,” by Lolis Eric Elie.

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This classic Vieux Carré recipe comes from Hotel Monteleone’s rotating Carousel Bar in New Orleans, where the drink was created. The cocktail’s name, which means “old square” in French, is a nod to the French Quarter.

Where to Drink in New Orleans Right Now

Commander’s Palace Sazerac

Brandy Crusta

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The pisco sour was one of the first drinks to be codified during the “Golden Age of Cocktails.” In fact, the recipe emerged as a result of a confluence of factors far from the South American spirit’s birthplace. 

California boasts a history of wine and brandy production dating back to the 17th century, as well as a deep connection to South and Central American territories once controlled by the Spanish Crown. Gold Rush era San Francisco was a hotbed for cocktail culture, by virtue of the glut of unattached men looking for ways to distract themselves from their arduous work in the mining industry. While the Conquistadors invested in California wine production, spirit distillation was much less widespread; for local high rollers who wished to imbibe, high-quality options were slim. 

Pisco—a grape-based distillate whose origins are a topic of debate between Peru and Chile—was suited perfectly to the late 19th century’s emerging “fancy drinks” trend. At turns aromatic and dry, the spirit pairs nicely with various fruits and acids, and was a natural choice for the era’s elevated serves. San Francisco’s Bank Exchange and Billiard Saloon popularized pisco in the 1880s by mixing it with pineapple, lime, and syrup for the enormously popular pisco punch, inspiring imitators throughout the city. Then in the 1920s, the South American liquor garnered its international fame when Victor Vaughn Morris, an American bar owner who’d immigrated to Lima, began serving a pisco-based riff on the whisky sour.  Made luxuriously silky via the addition of egg white (like the Ramos gin fizz popularized in New Orleans shortly before), and highly aromatic courtesy of Angostura bitters, a drink this good is virtually impossible to improve upon, which explains why the recipe hasn’t changed in over a century.

*Note: It is important to point out that Chilean pisco is generally more floral, while Peruvian versions can display more earthy and vegetal notes which I find more suitable for cocktailing. There are four broad styles of Peruvian Pisco: Puro, Aromatico, Acholado, and Mosto Verde. I prefer Acholado for its drier profile, while others may prefer the sweetness of Mosto Verde. The brands Barsol, Porton, and Macchu Pisco will all work nicely in this recipe.

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Various conflicting origin stories surround the classic sidecar recipe, which only adds to the throwback cocktail’s mystery and charm. It’s fairly certain that the bright and citrusy drink is a descendent of the brandy crusta, a groundbreaking 19th century classic that was one of the first to leverage techniques now considered commonplace. It incorporated a liqueur as a sweetener; it juxtaposed that sweetness with bitters; it wielded citrus peel as a means for opening up the olfactories; and it featured a sugared rim. Do these elements sound familiar? The crusta is also a precursor to the daisy cocktail, from which the hugely popular margarita was derived. 

These days, Cognac- and other brandy-based drinks are comparatively rare, but in a way, the sidecar is positioned squarely in its own sort of zeitgeist: The drink was created in the 1920s, when the popularity of rich, brandy-based cocktails was on the wane in favor of trendier gin drinks. With its crisp and refreshing flavor profile, the sidecar bucked expectations set by its sweeter and heavier ancestors, proving the grape-based spirit’s versatility once and for all. 
For best results, be sure to start with fresh citrus. And make your own simple syrup; stored in the fridge, it keeps well for up to a month.

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Over the last few years, as craft bars have increasingly sought to revive easy and approachable cocktails associated with retro trends harkening back to the Disco Era, the over-the-top 1990s, and even dive bars, many drinks that were once shunned by such “serious” establishments are now being thoughtfully reconsidered. Taking a somewhat cleaner, sleeker form, these nostalgic serves often feature premium spirits and other specialty ingredients and are assembled using more from-scratch preparation techniques. This cinnamon-scented apple martini recipe is my own reinterpretation of the candy-sweet classic appletini. Be sure to seek out an unsweetened apple brandy such as Calvados—I like Lemorton—or a premium American brand like Laird’s. (If you like a sweeter drink, add more toasted cinnamon syrup to taste.)

Stop Hating On the Appletini

Get the recipe >

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Louisville prides itself as a beacon of grand American traditions: It’s home to GE, Ford, and of course, the great Bourbon trail. The city produces a third of all our Bourbon—the dark stuff has become the lifeblood of the city’s tourism industry—and has also earned street cred as a craft beer hub. So when Lesley and Joe Heron decided to open the first Brandy distillery in town, they certainly turned some heads.

“I’m from the South, the far South—South Africa,” jokes Joe Heron, an affable expat who’d lived in England, Sweden, and Minneapolis before moving to warmer climes to open a distillery. With two successful businesses under their belt—Nutrisoda and Crispin Cider, both of which they’ve sold—, the Herons saw a space in the market sitting somewhere between ultra-luxe Cognacs and cheap, but low-quality brandies. “There was no $35 Brandy,” explains Heron. “More importantly, we wanted to create an American Brandy that defines the American spirit culturally and physically.”

Bourbon may be America’s native spirit, but Brandy is our oldest. “In 1640, Brandy was being distilled on Staten Island in what was New Netherlands,” says Heron. Believing that the craft cocktail movement’s renewed interest in historical recipes (and as such, historical spirits) would also lead to a resurgence in Brandy, Heron set about looking to produce the next big thing. Thus, Copper & Kings was born.

Defining American Brandy

Rather than follow the rigid models of Cognac and other European brandies, Heron created his spirit in the image of American Bourbon. “We make Brandy according to the American Bourbon tradition,” says Heron. At Copper & Kings, which will celebrate its third anniversary this year, the duo age their stuff in Bourbon barrels, using new American oak. They don’t add any caramel color or oak flavorings. “We make straight Brandy, like straight whiskey,” he adds, noting that opening in the middle of Bourbon Country allowed them to have access and proximity to the cooperages, barrels, and engineering talent that powers the behemoths of Bourbon production.

The flagship bottling, Copper & Kings’ American Craft Brandy, is made with classic muscat chenin blanc grapes grown in the central valley of California. It takes five tons of grapes to make one 53-gallon barrel of American Craft, which is sonically aged using musical vibrations to agitate the spirit and increase interaction with the edges of the oak barrels. Nontraditional methods notwithstanding, the Herons actually bring full-circle Kentucky’s long legacy of making Brandy: Joe Heron points out that in the late 1800s, there were 400 Brandy distilleries in Kentucky alone, with an additional 100 that produced both Brandy and whiskey.

Bartenders and consumers alike have jumped on the Copper & Kings bandwagon for the sheer quality of the product alone. “Copper & Kings may be the single best thing that has happened to Brandy in the long time,” says rare spirits hunter Nicolas Palazzi, who works as an importer for PM Spirits. “They are making awesome booze that caters directly to whiskey fans, and doing so with a cool, non-stuck-up attitude.”

The product also plays nicely into the narrative of craft distilling that consumers, and bartenders, are so accustomed to these days. “Brandy production is inherently small batch; in comes from orchards and the like,” says Joe Heron. “Grain grows all the time, but fruit only grows once a year.” Sadly, that slow, small-batch process also meant trouble for the Brandy industry. “The cost to maintain orchards and vineyards was too expensive, so they largely disappeared in the early 1900s.”

Getting Creative

After perfecting their new-school American Brandy, Copper & Kings went experimental. “We’re very good at absinthe,” says Heron. “We make absinthe in a very old-school way: the original absinthe was Brandy-based. It just became more cost effective with grain-neutral spirits.”

Muscat Brandy is double-distilled in copper pot stills, while the traditional botanicals (wormwood, anise, fennel, and hyssop) are macerated in low wine for 12 to 18 hours, then double-distilled. Like the Brandy, the absinthe isn’t chill-filtered, yielding an oily, viscous, intense spirit that likewise bucks convention. It’s perhaps here that the Herons are most “American”: “It’s American—you can do whatever the fuck you want,” laughs Heron. “One of the strengths of this nation is the lack of dogma. Dogma minimizes that imaginative approach to pioneering new ideas.”

To that end, Copper & Kings’ portfolio runs of the gamut of experimental distilling: there’s a vapor-distilled absinthe, absinthe aged in rye barrels, apple Brandy aged in tequila barrels, and two gins, both double-distilled (one from apple Brandy, one from grape Brandy). One particularly standout offering, called Blue Sky Mining, is a single-varietal seven-year-old muscat aged in Kentucky Hogshead barrels.

For all their experimentation, however, it’s not to say there’s a careless or unintentional approach to developing products here. Each bottling emphatically emphasizes its raw ingredients, a trait inherent in Brandy production. “Whiskey is a process of extraction and purification,” explains Heron. “You punch that spirit to palatability at its highest level. Brandy, on the other hand, is a retention and concentration process.” He adds, “Good Brandy makes its worth intentionally on concentrating the natural fruit.” Whereas whiskey can be produced en masse thanks to column stills, Copper & Kings uses copper pot distillation for an intense, batch-by-batch process.

Heron, an immigrant, recognizes that the love that Copper & Kings has received is as much about the taste of their spirit as the intrinsically welcoming spirit of Louisville, and even America. “For all of the confidence this nation has, we are inherently self-effacing and welcoming,” he says. He hopes that door-open attitude is afforded to all: “What’s the difference between a refugee and an immigrant?” he muses. “Timing.”

A Louisville Destination

Copper & Kings’ distillery sits in the heart of Butchertown, the “Brooklyn of Louisville,” as Heron puts it. Established in 1796, it’s one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, once known, as the name implies, for its meat production facilities. Like many of today’s destination-worthy distilleries, there’s a lot happening for visitors to engage, from spirits tastings to distillery tours and events.

Heron’s commitment to environmental sustainability manifests right in the solar-powered distillery’s entrance: black and orange shipping containers flank the entrance of a 4,300 square-foot butterfly garden, which serves specifically as a waystation for monarchs migrating south to Mexico and as a pollinator habitat for bees and butterflies.

Music is also a draw at the space. Drinkers can catch a glimpse of barrels in the basement cellar, where music pulses at all times from the Copper & Kings Spotify playlist. Upstairs, three pot stills, Magdalena, Sarah, and Isis are named after characters featured in Bob Dylan’s Desire album.

A second-floor gallery offers a side of art with your sipping, while a small courtyard hawks grown-up milkshakes, ice cream floats, and handheld meat pies. But it’s on the third floor that sets you back in Louisville. “We have the best view of downtown Louisville,” says Heron. “The third floor sky deck is by far the best in town.” It’s here, overlooking Bourbon Country while sipping a glass of American Brandy, that one can best appreciate the spirit of free-wheeling experimentation that is more quintessentially American than any single booze or bottle.

The post This Brandy is One of the Best Spirits From Bourbon Country appeared first on Saveur.

Don Draper has rye whiskey, James Bond has the vodka martini, and George Washington, father of our country, had applejack. Considered by many to be America’s oldest spirit, applejack owes its popularity mostly to a Scotsman, William Laird, who emigrated to the new world with two sons in 1698. After settling in what is now Monmouth County, New Jersey, he began making apple brandy and applejack (‘apple brandy’ and ‘applejack’ are used interchangeably—’blended’ applejack is a blend of brandy and neutral grain spirits from corn to create an apple whiskey).

The seriously boozy spirit, called “cyder spirit,” was so beloved that its recipe was requested by George Washington himself to supply the Revolutionary forces. Later, William’s grandson, Robert, who fought in the Revolutionary War, would open the Laird family’s distillery, which was also the first commercial distillery in the country. After learning how to make the spirit, president-to-be George Washington even sold some of his own making.

America’s oldest distillery, the famed producer of applejack and apple brandy, has grown from obscure spirit holdout to bar cult icon

Later, in the 18th century, traveling preacher Johnny Appleseed brought the spirit to the masses of the Ohio River Valley as he undertook his legendary barefoot journey—spreading not only the gospel of Jesus Christ, but also of applejack. Around that same time, a young bartender named Abraham Lincoln was serving applejack in his Springfield, Illinois saloon, called Berry and Lincoln.

Though other presidential fans of applejack include Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was known to splash it into a martini, and Lyndon B. Johnson, who presented a case of Laird’s to then Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin, these days, applejack’s notoriety is most recognized in the bartending community—thanks in part to Pegu Club proprietor Audrey Saunders, who was one of the first to bring the stuff into her seminal bar. As for the Laird family, they’re still producing their famed applejack, apple brandy, and a number of related products—including a moonshine-like distillate called Jersey Lightning. Ninth-generation owner Lisa Laird runs the family business, which remains one of the only producers of applejack, though there are several others on the market.

To celebrate Presidents’ Day, we asked bartender Ray Allen Fritz of Porchlight in NYC to demonstrate his original applejack-apple brandy cocktail. Watch the above video to see how to make the Harvest Moon cocktail, a sour variation using Laird’s apple brandy as the base.

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Nicolas Palazzi and Alexander Rainer are walking in the cloud-shrouded Tyrolean Alps, somewhere above Innsbruck, Austria. The sun is setting; the cool air, scented with moss and barnyard. Cowbells ring, flies buzz lazily about.

Rainer, the co-owner of a schnaps distillery called Rochelt, is exuberant. Classically Austrian with bright blue-green eyes and cleanly cut blond hair, he makes conversation about hiking and the region’s best sausage (rostbratwurst, leberkäse) and cheese (Tiroler Alpkäse).

Palazzi, a Bordeaux-born and New York—based spirits importer, is serious, broad shouldered, solid like the boxer he once was. His company, PM Spirits (Paul-Marie Spirits, named for his father), specializes in discovering, importing, and distributing small-scale, handmade spirits.

Watch: The Spirit Hunter at Work

In an era when so many spirits are conceptualized as brands and traded like commodities, Palazzi’s method of face-to-face reconnaissance is unusual. He approaches producers with the scrutiny and meticulous inquisitiveness of an art appraiser. “It has to be real,” he says of the liquid itself. “I have to feel excited about it—and the people behind it.” Beyond novelty, he always asks, Is this a bottle worth acquiring? Are its creators invested in their work? Palazzi is always searching for the spirit behind a spirit.

When they reach the top of the range, Rainer and Palazzi trade sips of Mirabelle plum schnaps from a forest-green glass pocket flask. The yellow walnut-size fruit are sourced, Rainer says, from Weinviertel, a region in eastern Austria known for its grüner veltliner. He’s bottled them “only in years when the fruit is exceptional”—2004, 2005, and a 2006 that will become a 10-year-old vintage. It’s bright, soft, and tart—the exact flavor of a wild, sour plum. In a country where amateur distilling is common, Rochelt’s spirits are to homemade schnaps as first-growth bordeaux is to table wine.

Rochelt was founded in 1989 by Rainer’s father-in-law, Gunter Rochelt, who was set on perfecting the Tyrolean tradition of distilling eau-de-vie. When Gunter passed away in 2009, Rainer inherited the business along with his wife, Annia, and her two sisters, Julia and Teresa Rochelt. Their spirits are made in extremely limited quantities from difficult-to-source fruits like wild Carpathian raspberries, Styrian Gravenstein apples, and Burgenländer gewürztraminer grapes. Bottled in elaborate, striated green glass pincer bottles (a traditional Austrian design in which the middle is pinched together) and topped with silver stoppers designed by Otto Jakob, a German jeweler whose works are highly collectible, Rochelt’s spirits are expensive (up to $450 for a 375-ml bottle) and have never legally been brought into the United States.

The pair reach a mountain hut where they sit to eat brown bread and landjäger sausage with grainy mustard. On a typical sourcing trip, Palazzi spends most of his time in dusty basements or cellars with dirt floors. “I usually meet people from the land who are digging holes or repairing tractors,” he says. He works most often in France and laments that producers in Cognac are famously tight-lipped, especially in older, family-run operations. Rainer, by contrast, is happy to share the secrets of the family business; he’s proud of their precision, their devotion to tradition, and the legacy they sustain.

This is what Palazzi is looking for: a passion for beautiful materials over replicable merchandise. Hunting spirits, Palazzi often finds himself discovering families—a pair of brothers in Calvados, a fourth-generation cognac maker, a second-generation distiller of biodynamic eau-de-vie—whose work he heard about by word of mouth. (Rochelt came to him through a request from Gabriel Kreuther, an Alsatian restaurant in New York City.) Beyond an eye for quality, Palazzi’s chief talent is having the diligence to gain the trust of people whose businesses were never built to be marketed.

This kind of patient scouting—celebrating the unsung and obscure, the handmade and peculiar—is as rare as the spirits he seeks. When he first encounters a new producer, he thinks as much about the people behind it as the product itself.

“The stuff in the glass needs to be pure,” Palazzi says. “And the people behind it need to be truthful.” In the case of Rochelt, he knew the spirits were worth pursuing the moment he had a sample. “I tasted it, and everything was there.” He just needed to meet its makers.

The next day, Rainer and Palazzi sit on the distillery’s terrace, sipping through a series of schnaps. They’ve come to apricot, a Rochelt touchstone. “This one is riper, more vibrant,” Palazzi says, burrowing his nose into a tiny, handmade eau-de-vie glass. “This one is tighter, restrained. The ’08 is good, but the ’09 is better.” Rainer nods as if Palazzi has just passed some sort of test.

Inside the distillery, apricot mash is added to a gleaming copper still. The room smells of baked fruit. “We get these apricots from Wachau, where they’re harvested on the banks of the Danube,” says Rainer. It’s unusual to source fruit this way—grower by grower, region by region, year by year. In fact, Rainer’s process is much like making wine, choosing particular fruits from specific parcels of land in superlative years. “Ripeness matters,” he says. “Where it comes from matters.” He gets red Williams pears and morello cherries from Austria, wild rowanberry from Finland, forest raspberries from Armenia, and oranges from Sicily, among others. He experiments often with new fruits, new growers, and new combinations. And some years he’ll reject fruit that he doesn’t feel will make perfect spirits. This year, the apricots have shown very well.

“Does anything else go in the mash?” Palazzi asks, peering into the porthole of the copper still.

“Just the fruit,” says Rainer. “Follow me.”

Up a flight of stairs and into an attic room filled with soft light refracted through large glass balloons filled with vintage eau-de-vie, organized into neat rows, each one’s neck covered only with a small piece of linen. It’s oddly intimate and still, like walking through a museum storeroom filled with works waiting to be framed. Rochelt is singular for many reasons, but most notably for its spirits’ long resting periods. All of its schnaps are aged in these shimmering vessels, some for 12 years or more. This long period of dormancy allows the schnaps to evaporate, concentrate, and meld together in a way that couldn’t be achieved if they were cut with water right away and bottled, which is how most spirits that don’t see the inside of a barrel are made.

In one corner Rainer keeps reserve bottles that will remain at their natural proof. Where many resting rooms are heady with evaporating alcohol, thick with dust, and stacked with sleeping barrels, this room smells only of fruit—brambly berries, perfumed pears, foxy grapes.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Palazzi says, wandering through the illuminated glass balloons, sniffing at the linen caps, taking notes.

“We lose 2,000 liters a year to the angels,” says Rainer. “But the angels have been good to us.”

A Few of Palazzi’s Rare Finds

Navarre Grande Fine Champagne Cognac and Pineau des Charentes
A fourth-generation cognac maker, Jacky Navarre makes his spirits in a way most producers have forgotten. Hand-harvested grapes are distilled on the lees and put into a barrel until they proof naturally to 45 percent ABV, a process that takes 40 to 50 years—yes, half a century.

Cazottes Eau-de-vie and liqueurs in Tarn, France
Laurent Cazottes inherited the knowledge of spirit making from his father, a traveling distiller. In pursuit of purity, Laurent pioneered the idea of growing and distilling his own biodynamic produce, including wild quince, sour cherry, prunelart grapes (a heritage grape from Southwest France), and greengage plums.

Navazos-Palazzi Sherry-cask aged spirits in Jerez
A collaboration between Palazzi himself and famed sherry purveyor Equipo Navazos, these single-cask spirits—including Caribbean rum and Spanish whiskey and brandy—are aged in some of the best cellars in all of Andalucía.

Frank Cornelissen Grappa from Etna, Sicily
Winemaker Frank Cornelissen believes deeply in making wines ultranaturally—no crop manipulation, gentle bottling, no sulfur. The result? Funky, terroir-driven releases beloved in the natural wine community. These labels—Rosso del Contadino and MunJebel Rosso—are made using the same excellent grapes as Cornelissen’s prized wines.

The post Meet the Spirit Hunter Tracking Down Some of the World’s Best Brandy appeared first on Saveur.

For the month of April, SAVEUR is all about New Jersey, the unsung hero state of American eating. Here’s why. Read all our Jersey Month stories here.

For centuries, New Jersey has been the home of Laird and Company, the first commercial distillery in America, that produces apple spirits as brisk and sweet and melancholy as an autumn day in the Garden State. If you’re looking for a pure reflection of the history of American distilling, nothing tells that story like Laird’s applejack and apple brandy. And where the latter is concerned, you’ll also find one of the most obsessed-over American spirits in the modern cocktail canon.

Or maybe, given its scarcity, you won’t.

The history of Laird’s is really the history of America: In 1698, Alexander Laird endured the perilous journey from his native Scotland to the new world with his two sons. They settled down for good in Colts Neck, a Monmouth County, New Jersey town where the rolling hills were green and apple trees were plentiful.

Laird—whom historians suspect made whiskey before—used this most abundant resource to make pure apple brandy. It became a family pursuit, and in later years the Lairds became so skilled that a gentleman farmer named George Washington wrote to them with a request for a recipe for their “cyder spirits.” Years later the family provided Washington’s troops with apple brandy during the Revolutionary War.

Perhaps the most American characteristic of Laird’s is the company’s resilience. A fire in the 1800s burned down the distillery; they rebuilt and increased production. They outlasted Prohibition, which required them to stop distilling for a decade, by producing sweet cider and apple sauce. During World War II, they ceased producing hooch again and instead made dried apples and pectin to survive the war effort. Today, it’s one of the few producers of applejack in America (and certainly the largest), a holdout from a once well-practiced American tradition of at-home apple “jacking.”

In the mid-70s, as Monmouth County’s apple orchards were swallowed up by development, the Laird family—which still owns the company—began sourcing their apples from Virginia’s fertile Shenandoah Valley and moved their production to a facility in nearby North Garden. They blended their apple brandy and neutral grain spirits to make their most popular product: applejack. And they remained afloat during the days when martinis and gin and tonics were considered exotic by branching to other spirits, such as vodka, as well as bottling hooch for other producers. According to Lisa Laird, the company’s vice president, the only people drinking applejack where old men who bellied up a local pubs for a shot and a beer. “Everybody else thought applejack was cereal.”

That changed in the classic cocktail boom of the mid-2000s, and suddenly the Lairds found themselves in possession of a newly hot commodity. As drinks like the Jack Rose grew in popularity across the country, so did Laird’s, one of the only players in the applejack business. And then, in 2005, influential cocktail revivalist icon Audrey Sanders, of New York’s Pegu Club, paid the company a call about an even more obscure product: 100-proof bottled-in-bond apple brandy. Other bartenders soon followed.

While applejack is perfectly suited to shaken drinks with citrus, bonded apple brandy, which requires 20 pounds of apples per bottle, has a flavor that’s rich and fruity and dry all at once, and it brings a whole new kind of complexity to an Old Fashioned or Manhattan. Virtually overnight, the spirit became a must-have, with bartenders going so far as to create cocktails specifically for it. A Copperhead adds rye and yellow Chartreuse to the apples, and then there’s the Lightning bolt, a little like a Sazerac with apple brandy instead of rye.

Jillian Vose, the bartender at New York’s excellent The Dead Rabbit, recently created a cocktail called the Soldier Boy, which calls for lime juice, grapefruit juice, Don’s spices (one part each of vanilla syrup and St. Elizabeth Allspice); cinnamon cordial; Combier Pamplemousse Rose; Old Forrester 100 proof bourbon; and a half-an-ounce of Laird’s Bonded. She told me that even with all of those ingredients the Laird’s still stands out. “Laird’s bonded is made from apples,” she notes, “it’s not apple-flavored. It’s aged like bourbon and has beautiful undertones. It’s gritty and has a great backbone for cocktails.”

With five other apple spirits on the market (Laird’s 7.5 and 12 years, applejack, a 100-proof unbonded brandy, and an unaged brandy called Jersey Lightning), the Lairds just don’t have the capacity or fruit to meet the demand for the bonded. Bartenders seek out bottles of the bonded brandy with the same mania reserved for Van Winkle bourbon or Russian River IPA. There’s a Reddit thread dedicated to finding the stuff, in which one obsessed cocktail enthusiast refers to the bonded brandy as a “unicorn.” A new release is coming in 2017.

And so it seems the Lairds will probably be making spirits for another three centuries. They’ve already been at it for nine or ten generations, and a new one is preparing to take over. Lisa Laird’s kids—both college-aged—are learning the business. They’ve started at the bottom, spending their summers scrubbing the tanks and sweeping the distillery floor. Amen.

Alex French is a Monmouth County-based journalist. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, GQ, New York, Grantland, and elsewhere.

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