St. George Spirits Pear Brandy, California, USA

Founded in 1982 by German-born Jörg Rupf, St. George Spirits is one of the oldest craft distilleries in the United States. The distillery, housed in an old World War II airplane hangar on a former naval base on the edge of San Francisco, is home to Lance Winters, mad scientist and St. George’s master distiller. Winters, who is widely-known for experimenting with different types of spirits, has a laboratory dominated by a 10-liter test still in addition to the glass beakers and graduated cylinders that cover every inch of his counterspace. Next to the dusty chalkboards caked with equations for the conversion of sugar to alcohol and intricate diagrams of molecular structures are bottles of experimental whiskies, vodkas and even an aging balsamic vinegar (it’s 14 years old already). Our objective with St. George Pear Brandy, explains Winters, was to “take an olfactory snapshot to capture exactly what pears smell like at their peak of ripeness.” The brandy is made using aromatic, dry-farmed, organic Bartlett pears, which are distilled with their stems and leaves. “We pack about 30 pounds of fruit into every bottle,” says Winters. St. George Pear Brandy has an aroma of sweet citrus and pears that gives way to notes of apples, caramel, oak, cinnamon, and, of course, pears. The brandy was named one of the Top 50 Spirits of 2014 by F. Paul Pacult’s Spirit Journal. Pick up a bottle today!