The Cult of Charbay

How a 13th-generation distiller became America’s first, and maybe best, craft whiskey maker.

One of the most unique whiskeys in the world, Charbay’s Pilsner Whiskey was distilled with bottle-ready pilsner beer and aged 14 years (6 years in oak, 8 in stainless steel). The result is piney, slightly bitter, citrusy and rich. Distilled in 1999, it’s unlike any other whiskey out there. “Was anyone else distilling beer?”

Marko Karakasevic repeats the question, thinking about it, before responding.

“Commercially, no. I’m sure somebody in Germany or Japan might have been doing it. But there were no other hop-flavored whiskeys out there. We were the first.”

Being that craft whiskey really only started getting any sort of notoriety in America in the mid-aughts, it’s easy to think that big names like Stranahan’s (Denver, CO; 2005), Tuthilltown (Gardiner, NY; 2005) and Balcones (Waco, TX; 2008) were the first on the scene. But a few distilleries were so far ahead of the game that they’ve evaded widespread attention.

One such place is Charbay, which Karakasevic owns and operates in Ukiah, CA, with his wife, Jenni. Though largely unknown to mainstream bourbon drinkers, Charbay has developed a rabid cult following over the last two decades thanks to its reputation as America’s first craft whiskey maker and its one-of-a-kind distillates, which share as much in common with new-school IPAs as they do traditional whiskey.

“[It’s] the single most legendary American craft whiskey ever created,” claims David Othenin-Girard, the spirits buyer for K&L Wine Merchants in Los Angeles. “The quality of the spirit is paramount, and we still don’t know exactly how Marko did it.”

Karakasevic’s story starts with an immigrant, Milorad “Miles” Karakasevic, from Novi Sad, in what was once Yugoslavia. He bounced around North America starting in the 1960s, making wine in Michigan and the Napa Valley, before landing in Mendocino County in the early 1980s. By 1983, he had opened his own winery and distillery, Domaine Karakash, focused on Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and cognac-style brandies. It was well regarded in the area, but largely unknown outside Mendocino County, let alone California.

When Miles’s son Marko, who would be the family’s thirteenth-generation distiller, officially joined what was now known as Charbay in 1995, he was itching to make his family’s first whiskey. But he didn’t want it to taste like what was coming out of Kentucky and Tennessee at the time. To him, a mass-produced spirit made in a factory was akin to a flavorless lager from St. Louis or Milwaukee.

“I took inspiration from all the local microbreweries that were in the midst of revolutionizing the once-bland beer industry,” Karakasevic recalls. “You have to use beer to make whiskey, so why not use the most delicious beer possible for Chrissakes?”

Karakasevic contract-brewed 20,000 gallons of bottle-ready pilsner at Benziger Family Winery’s microbrewery, Sonoma Mountain Brewing Co., and then spent three-and-half weeks, twenty-four hours a day, double-distilling the beer on his copper alembic pot still. Being that it was already carbonated, it was a challenge to safely eliminate all the CO2. After he had made his cuts, he had 1,000 gallons that went into 22 new charred-oak barrels. Not a fan of overaged whiskey — “liquid lumber,” he calls it — he aged it for just two years and bottled his two best-tasting barrels at a full-proof 64.7 percent ABV for what he called Charbay Double Barrel Whiskey.

“I was quite happy with what occurred,” Karakasevic says, claiming the flavors of the pilsner were ten times more concentrated, with aromas of pine and citrus (yet no lingering bitterness) coming from the beer’s Czech Saaz hops and a palate both bready and a bit spicy. “There was no other whiskey on the market tasting like that. Period.”

Though Karakasevic had inadvertently created a new style of whiskey — “hop-flavored whiskey” according to TTB labeling standards — the 840 gold-painted bottles of $350 whiskey were a tough sell. Craft whiskey wasn’t what it is today, and drinkers of the era were reticent enough to buy, say, $45 bottles of Blanton’s Bourbon back in 2001. This was an era when flavored vodka was still red-hot, and Karakasevic also had a good one — a Meyer lemon number made from 100 percent fresh fruit. When he’d travel the country flogging his vodka, however, he’d also test receptive audiences with his oddball whiskey. Eventually, he started reeling in some early adopters.

“I got turned on to Charbay by L.A. Whisk(e)y Society back when there was just one bottling of the whiskey, maybe two,” says Steve Ury, an attorney well known for his whiskey blogging. Ury loved how Charbay had both a funkiness and maturity that made it taste like “liquid weed,” and the esteemed private tasting group he was a part of worshipped Charbay so much they would eventually buy an entire half-barrel of 12-year-old distillate in 2011. Othenin-Girard, meanwhile, thought Charbay Whiskey to be the “work of mad genius,” calling it “massive, over the top, intense and awe inspiring.”

Yet, if it slowly was gaining a reputation among the whiskey cognoscenti in the Los Angeles area, it was not exactly flying off shelves.

“My whiskey sold slowly and that was fine,” Karakasevic recalls, noting how then, as now, Charbay is a family operation with no marketing or advertising budget. “We didn’t have much to sell. And we didn’t need to sell it to survive.”

When Sonoma Mountain Brewing went out of business, Karakasevic next decided to distill his absolute favorite beer, Bear Republic’s Racer 5 IPA, sourcing a 6,000-gallon, 16-wheel tanker truck full of it. The resultant Charbay R5, first released in 2010, would expand the brand’s cult reach with its mix of fruity, floral, dank and spicy notes. He also eventually produced Whiskey S — distilled from Bear Republic’s Big Bear Stout and aged in used French oak barrels — while, every few years, releasing older and older bottlings of that original pilsner distillate — including a 13-and-a-half-year-old Release IV in 2013 and a 16-year-old Release V in the fall of 2016, the final 72 bottles of which sold for $675 each.

“To me, it’s way more valuable than cult bourbon,” says Ury, who once claimed his Charbay was the one whiskey he would save

“George T. Stagg, Weller and Pappy [Van Winkle] are great, but there’s tons of other bourbons that have similar flavor profiles. There is simply nothing like Charbay, especially those original pilsner bottles.”

Marko and Jenni Karakasevic have run Charbay Distillery since it spun off into a separate business in 2017, but the Karakasevic family has been making booze since the 18th century, when it was making brandies and wine in central Europe.

The beer base of Charbay R5 is Karakasevic’s favorite beer, Bear Republic’s Racer 5 IPA. It’s dank and fruity like an IPA but sweet and spicy like a whiskey. Whiskey S started as the same brewery’s Big Bear Stout. Each can be found in select markets from about $75 to $125 a bottle. if a natural disaster struck. “George T. Stagg, Weller and Pappy [Van Winkle] are great, but there’s tons of other bourbons that have similar flavor profiles. There is simply nothing like Charbay, especially those original pilsner bottles.”

In this wild era where bourbon obsessives will eagerly pay $600 for one of 50,000 or so yearly bottles of the aforementioned Stagg, you would think the fact Charbay remains extremely limited and very expensive would be a positive. Those two attributes are typically catnip to American whiskey collectors, but maybe the atypical flavor profile continues to scare many off. It shouldn’t.

“Marko not only created a completely idiosyncratic style, but also it’s wildly delicious, intense and bombastic,” Othenin-Girard says. According to him, new R5 releases “do pretty well” at K&L these days.

Some of the biggest fans of Charbay are the creative forces behind Wolves Whiskey, an ultra-hip, Hollywood-based label launched by fashion mavens Jon Buscemi and James Bond in 2019. Wanting to dip their toes into the whiskey industry, they could have done what everyone else does and sourced the same bourbon that is made in a big factory in Indiana called MGP. Being that Wolves Whiskey comes in lavish, Italian-sheepskin-labeled bottles and is released online like a sneaker drop, it would have made perfect sense to consider the liquid secondary. But, after being introduced to the “wacky shit” — which Buscemi uses endearingly to describe Karakasevic’s whiskeys — they knew they had no choice but to source some Charbay and let him blend it into what would become their initial release, First Run.

“A lot of what MGP makes is excellent juice,” says Jeremy Joseph, CEO of Wolves Whiskey. “That said, there’s nothing like what Marko does.”

Maybe this flashy association with Wolves will be what finally nudges Charbay into the whiskey mainstream. Or perhaps Karakasevic’s creations will always appeal, somewhat exclusively, to purists that value flavor over flair.

“So many craft distillers are trying to do something ‘different,’” Othenin-Girard says. “But they forget to make it delicious.”