St. George Spirits

St. George Spirits distills inside a 65,000-square-foot former airplane hangar at the old Alameda Naval Air Station in California, a fitting home for a company that has spent more than four decades treating distilling as a craft rather than a formula. Founded in 1982, it is widely recognized as America's oldest independent craft distillery, and its influence on the modern American spirits movement, including American single malt whiskey, traces directly back to the eau de vie stills that started it all.

History & Heritage

Jörg Rupf founded St. George Spirits in 1982, building the business on eau de vie, the exacting European tradition of distilling fruit into clear, intensely aromatic brandy. The house description of the process, concentrating the essence of fruit by "cramming 30 pounds of fruit into one 750ml bottle," captures the obsessive, low-yield philosophy that has defined the distillery since its earliest days. That approach won early recognition beyond California: an early pear brandy took top honors at the 1992 Destillata blind tasting.

Rupf retired in 2010, having spent decades training the distillers who would carry the operation forward. Lance Winters, who had worked under Rupf, stepped up as Master Distiller, and Dave Smith became Head Distiller. That same year, St. George sold its Hangar One Vodka line to Proximo Spirits, a move that let the distillery refocus on the small-batch, experimental spirits, whiskey, gin, absinthe, and liqueurs, that define its identity today. St. George Spirits remains independently owned and operated, with Winters and Smith at the helm as of July 2026.

Along the way, the distillery built a reputation among the most decorated in American craft spirits: ten James Beard Foundation Award nominations, membership in the Whisky Magazine Hall of Fame, induction into the Spirit Journal Hall of Fame, and, for Rupf personally, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Distilling Institute and five James Beard nominations as Outstanding Wine & Spirits Professional. St. George also produced the first legal American absinthe, St. George Absinthe Verte, since the U.S. ban took effect in 1912.

The Whiskey

St. George Single Malt Whiskey, first released in 2000, is the distillery's flagship whiskey and has been named Craft Whiskey of the Year by Whisky Advocate. Its mash bill has stayed unchanged since Lot 1: 100% two-row barley malted to five distinct roast levels, pale, crystal, chocolate, and black patent malts, alongside alder- and beech-smoked malt sourced from Bamberg, Germany. That smoked malt gives the whiskey a savory, campfire-adjacent character uncommon among American single malts.

Aging is where St. George pushes furthest from convention. Rather than relying on a single cooperage type, the distillery matures its single malt across used bourbon barrels, French oak, port barrels, sherry barrels, apple brandy casks, Tennessee whiskey barrels, California Sauternes-style casks, and umeshu casks, then blends across those lots to build each release. The St George Baller American Single Malt Whiskey carries that experimentation further still, a California-inspired expression finished in house-made umeshu casks, a nod toward Japanese whisky sensibilities filtered through St. George's own fruit-brandy heritage.

Why It Matters

St. George Spirits occupies a singular place in American whiskey: it predates the craft distilling boom by roughly two decades and helped define what an independent, non-Scottish single malt whiskey could taste like. Its five-roast-level malt bill and multi-cooperage aging program were unusual choices when the Single Malt Whiskey launched in 2000 and remain a reference point for other American single malt producers today. The distillery's range extends well past whiskey, into gin, vodka, absinthe, and liqueurs, including the Gold Medal-winning St. George Spiced Pear Liqueur, but the throughline across all of it is the same eau de vie-trained attention to raw ingredients that Jörg Rupf brought to the hangar in 1982.

Visiting the Distillery

The St. George Spirits tasting room and bottle shop, at the original Alameda hangar, are open Wednesday through Friday from 2 to 6pm and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 6pm. Reservations are recommended for tastings and tours.