18 distiller
California is one ongoing "wine country" with dozens of appellations and
massive regions home to hundreds of winemaking pioneers and varieties
grown from south to north. Napa is the region that not only put California
wine on the map but New World wine as a whole, ever since the game-chang-
ing Judgment of Paris 1976. With sprawling neighbor Sonoma County and
the stunning Mendocino County just north of Napa and Sonoma Counties,
it's understandable that spirits and cocktails would always be in the shadow
of Mother Wine in NorCal's wine mecca.
But the region's distilling pioneers have also
led the way, especially Hubert Germain-Robin
from Cognac, France, and Milorad (Miles)
Karakasevic from the former Yugoslavia, who
both launched distilleries/wineries in the
early 1980s: Germain-Robin and Charbay
respectively. Bringing their Old World dis-
tilling traditions in brandy (Cognac-style
and fruit brandies) with them, they reveled
in California's bounty and the rich grapes
and fruits they could work with outside of
the more confined European rules of distilla-
tion. ese Wine Country trailblazers (Hubert
in Ukiah, Mendocino Co., Miles on Spring
Mountain in Napa's St. Helena) modeled what
"craft" distilling was decades before it caught
on nationally. In this issue, I interview Miles'
son, Marko, who has launched many beloved
products and heads the distilling side of
Charbay, now in Ukiah. e Karakasevic fam-
ily still runs Charbay Winery and Distillery,
while Germain-Robin is now owned by E. &
J. Gallo, recently releasing their updated line
of brandies.
Again, in a region where grapes and wine
rule, craft distillers have proliferated in the past
decade. Game changers include the mostly
female distiller-led Spirit Works (spiritworks-
distillery.com) in Sebastopol, which produces
one of the best sloe gins in the world, gin,
vodka and a range of whiskeys distilled from
California-grown, organic grains. ey were
also named ADI's 2020 Distillery of the Year.
Adam Spiegel has taken Sonoma Distilling
Co. (sonomadistillingcompany.com) far in his
expanded Rohnert Park distillery, producing
a range of whiskeys with mostly California-
grown grain. Husband-wife-run Griffo
Distillery (griffodistillery.com) in Petaluma
shines in gin and whiskey as well as coffee
liqueur. With a lovely bar/distillery in down-
town Petaluma, husband-wife-run Barber
Lee Spirits (barberleespirits.com) also corners
whiskey and excels in absinthe.
Hanson of Sonoma Distillery (hansonof-
sonoma.com) offers Girl and the Fig (a
decades-old downtown Sonoma restaurant)
boxed lunches and picnics in their garden by
a pond as well as tastings in their Sausalito
tasting room during the pandemic. Other
distilleries in the region include Napa Valley
Distillery (napadistillery.com) in Napa, Alley
6 Craft Distillery (alley6.com) and Young &
Yonder (youngandyonder.com) in Healdsburg,
Sonoma Brothers Distilling (sonomabroth-
ersdistilling.com) in Windsor, Lightning
Spirits (lightningspiritsco.com) in Petaluma,
Rapscallion Spirits (rapscallionspirits.com) in
Ukiah and Jaxon Keys Winery & Distillery
(jaxonkeyswinery.com) in Hopland.
Our bar manager interview this issue is the
dynamic foursome that runs Healdsburg's
Duke's Spirited Cocktails and soon-to-open
Burdock. ey bring San Francisco/big city
quality to a small town, not so easy to find
across these three massive counties where cock-
tails have radically improved the last decade
but often can still fall behind the average in
the city. e mid-2000s ushered in Sonoma
County cocktail pioneer, Scott Beattie, who
first made his mark at the acclaimed restau-
rant Cyrus before going on to launch the
bars at Goose and Gander and Spoonbar. He
pioneered culinary cocktails, sourcing local
These Wine Country trailblazers (Hubert
in Ukiah, Mendocino Co., Miles on Spring
Mountain in Napa's St. Helena) modeled
what "cra" distilling was decades before it
caught on nationally.
