Brandies

About Our Brandies

We make traditional European-style brandies using locally grown fruits, yeast, and time. These aromatic spirits, which are not sweetened or flavored, are a true expression of the essence of each fruit.

Our brandy portfolio changes with the seasons. When you visit, you might find one, some, or all of the following:

• Oregon Bartlett Pear brandy
• Northwest Plum Brandy
• Pacific Northwest Cherry brandy
• Oregon Apple brandy
• Northwest Grappa

Our Process

Our Kothe pot still was designed specifically for making fruit brandy, and if you were to travel the countryside of southern Germany, you’d see many others like it.

To make brandy, we start with ripe, aromatic fruit. Depending on the fruit, we crush, de-stem, de-pit, or puree it before adding yeast and allowing it to ferment. Then, we distill one or two times on our German pot still, which uses a bain-marie-like steam jacket to gently heat the fermented fruit and extract its most aromatic components.

We prefer to let the brandy rest at still strength for some time, before reducing the proof very slowly for barreling or bottling.  Not all brandies will be aged, but when they are, we like to use refurbished French oak barrels.  Time in the barrel varies by spirit and is considered ready when it tastes right to us.