Whiskey weather

Distillers move forwarD with the notion that someDay all booze will be

Whiskey weather createD equal

by camillia lanham

Photos by steve e. miller

MAKING SPIRITS The one-of-a-kind hybrid still specially designed by Ascendant Spirits owner Stephen Gertman and Vendome Copper and Brassworks engineers is essentially two stills in one; liquid is first distilled through the pot and then distilled again through the column, creating a more refined spirit the first time it runs through the still.

P

rohibition ended. The national alcohol crackdown was repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933.

Now, 80 years later, Santa Barbara County’s first legal post-Prohibition distillery is officially operating.

Master Distiller Stephen Gertman put three products on the shelf for Buellton-based Ascendant Spirits’ March 1 grand opening party, including the intriguing American Star Caviar Lime Vodka, made from the fruits of a small Goleta orchard. Organic caviar limes are shaped and colored like dried bean pods, but they’re full of tiny blobs of translucent pulp.

Gertman also helped attendees to taste Breaker Bourbon and American Star Vodka— though only in quarter-ounce pours, one taste per product, as mandated by state law. Soon to follow those fertile spirits will be gins made from wild-harvested juniper, organic locally picked strawberry vodka, moonshine, and single malt whiskey.

Aging climate For Gertman, the grand opening party marked the realization of a dream that took two years of tilling soil, a little luck, some help from his family and friends, and hard work.

With perseverance, he turned a 13-year love affair with whiskey into what’s now his own distillery, tucked between Terravant Wine Company and Figueroa Mountain Brewing Company on Industrial Way. Gertman is an ambitious man who’s just beginning his 30s and is in the middle of career No. 2. Originally from Boston, he attended Occidental College and the College of Design in Pasadena.

After school, he moved from industrial design to the world of broadcast. He became a TV producer and followed that path for eight years until one day he decided he was sick of dealing

with the things that go with a career in the industry. After working on Top Gear—and, as he sees it, reaching the apex of his career in Los Angeles—he quit and found himself a new job.

“As soon as I left,” Gertman said, “[Ascendant Spirits] was the goal.”

The day after he stopped filming, he hopped into his first American Distilling Institute class.

From there, he managed to secure himself work as an assistant distiller at Breckenridge Distillery in Colorado—under the master distiller who, incidentally, taught him to distill whiskey from donuts during his first distilling class.

Donut-whiskey became grain-whiskey, and Breckenridge’s temporary assistant distiller became the fulltime master distiller in a new facility in Buellton. The facility has a small tasting room, a custom-made hybrid copper still, a steam-heated mash-tun, a few fermenters, and a wall of whiskey barrels aging in what Gertman said is the ideal climate.

Purple and blue are just starting to color the copper on Ascendant Spirits’ still—which really consists of two stills. The first distillation takes place in a huge, 500-gallon still shaped like a potbellied stove. The liquid becomes even more refined as it’s transferred into a large stainless steel tank with copper columns above it for the second and/or third distillations.

The liquor coming out of the still is extremely high in alcohol content, so it gets proofed down with water before getting either bottled or thrown into charred oak barrels for aging.

The climate is so ideal for aging whiskey that Gertman doesn’t use a heating or cooling system in the distillery; he just opens the doors and lets nature do its thing. And that thing happens daily. The way he explains it, aging whiskey properly is all about temperature shifts: cool mornings, warm days, and cool evenings.

Temperature regulates the way whiskey soaks up flavor from the barrels it’s aged in.

Heat opens up the wood’s pores, which pulls whiskey in. Cold air closes off the pores, which in turn pushes the whiskey out. Gertman said seasonal temperature shifts are part of the reason why Kentucky bourbon is so good.

“While it’s happening seasonally in Kentucky, it’s happening every day here,” Gertman said. “So we think we can age a whiskey in two to three years the way it’s aged in five to six years in Kentucky.”

A quarter-ounce of booze Ascendant Spirits put down roots in the valley only partly because of the weather. Another reason is access to fresh, local ingredients like our friend the caviar lime. And, of course, being in the middle of wine country doesn’t hurt.

Gertman has visions of Santa Ynez Valley wine tourists who need a grape break stopping in for a taste of something harder than the area’s standard pour.

“Whiskey’s going to taste significantly different than more wine,” he said. “It’s sort of breaking new ground.”

In the tradition of breaking new ground come all the special distillery-type things he can do with local wine- and beer-makers. A waft of grapes in the air at Ascendant Spirits’ open house paid tribute to that. The copper still’s column windows were spotted with non-sellable Terravant wine being distilled into drinkable brandy.

Gertman can also craft grappa from area grapes. As for the breweries, Figueroa Mountain is already asking for used Breaker Bourbon barrels in which to age special brews.

The big difference between operating a Terravant or Figueroa Mountain and operating a distillery with a license like Gertman’s is that he

Distillery continued page 7

STEAM POWERED The coils running up the inside of the mashtun heat the grain and water that will eventually become liquor.

After the liquid is heated and cooled, it’s fermented before being distilled in Ascendant Spirits’ brand-new copper still.

FAMOUS COPPER Vendome Copper and Brass Works is one of the top still makers in the world.

They have manufactured stills in Louisville, Kent. since the early 1900s.

GOOD OVER BAD The tank below the column portion of the still is where the spirit is separated into heads, hearts, and tails. Hearts are the drinkable portion of a distilled spirit, the heads are poisonous, and the tails have an undesirable taste.

Distillery from page 3 can’t sell any products directly to his customers.

And there’s also the fact that, by law, a distillery like Ascendant Spirits can only give tastes in quarter-ounce increments, at the limit of one pour per product per customer.

The regulations are part of an ancient set of California alcohol laws created after Prohibition ended, and California distillers in the same boat as Gertman say it’s unfair. While you can taste and purchase with freedom at any winery or brewery in California, that freedom is greatly restricted at your local distillery.

After Prohibition, laws governing boozemakers were designed to prevent big producers from gaining a monopoly and also protect the world from the terrible effects of alcohol. The three-tier system was born, with producers on one end, retailers on the other, and distributors caught happily in the middle.

Lobbyists caught up in the beer and wine revolution of the last few decades took their causes to Sacramento, so laws governing breweries and wineries have relaxed.

But spirits are a relatively new revolution, so the laws governing them remain decidedly un-relaxed: no magically creative specialty cocktails, no relaxing time spent at the distillery bar with a cold beverage, and certainly no taking a bottle home.

“We’re the redheaded stepchild,” Gertman said. “These are the sorts of things that we’re trying to get changed.”

Not like the others Ascendant Spirits is the newest member of the California Artisan Distillers Guild, created in 2012 to bring distillers together to work toward a goal many individuals were already trying to

accomplish on their own: the ability to operate much like breweries and wineries do in the state.

“Many of us were talking to our legislators,” Ventura Limoncello owner James Carling said.

“But we weren’t talking to each other.”

Limoncello is an Italian liquor made with lemons. Carling, who’s also the artisan guild’s Southern Coast director, said the ultimate goal is to level the playing field between the three tiers of the alcohol industry. Federal laws mostly govern taxing alcohol and leave the nitty-gritty operation, production, and distributing laws to the states.

California’s current laws force distilleries to almost completely rely on distributors and retailers to sell their products. That essentially means the only money spirits producers make is from selling product to their distributors.

“It means I don’t make any money,” Carling explained.

Ventura Limoncello operates under a rectifier’s license, which is a different type of license from the liquor-manufacturing license Ascendant Spirits has. For tasting purposes, the restrictions on Carling are more strict still than for a distiller. He can’t even pour a quarterounce of limoncello for someone to taste.

“I get calls every week from people asking what my hours are,” Carling said. “And I have to explain the state law to them and that we can’t accommodate them.”

Now, California distillers want their turn at business-friendly amendments. They’ve dubbed their proposal “Taste California” and are currently lobbying the petition in Sacramento.

What they call for in the proposal is “the ability to offer public tasting of their own products … within their own state and federally licensed and bonded premises” and “the ability to offer bottle spirits for retail purchases directly to non-licensed consumers only.”

Retail sales and a tasting room atmosphere are

two things that are essential to the survival of a small distillery, said Bill Owens from the American Distilling Institute. He said that in the 14 states that allow both tasting and retail sales, some distilleries are making as much as $30,000 a month from direct sales of bottles, T-shirts, glasses, and the like.

“People come in and want a souvenir,” Owens said. “And they’re spending money that makes [distilleries] a viable business. It’s a very important thing.”

Boomtime The beauty of any craft industry that produces tasty goods for the consumer is the crafters’ ability to show off their goods. Frankly, the beauty of anything artisan is that it’s so “in” right now.

“We’re just a part of the revolution,” Owens said.

“Buy American.”

And Ascendant Spirits jumped on the distillery end of the bandwagon at the right time. Owens said there are 456 licensed distillers across the country, with 50 more currently in the works.

States have slowly begun changing their postProhibition laws to accommodate for businesses opening in the latest hyped industry. And always-on-the-liberal-edge California is one of the few remaining states with laws restricting both retail sales and tasting opportunities.

However, restrictive laws aren’t hampering the trend in the state, which currently boasts 35 licensed distilleries and many more that Owens said are incognito.

“They refuse to announce until they’re totally ready,” Owens said. “Because as soon as you announce, everyone’s knocking at the door.”

Ascendant Spirits may be the first to open its doors with full disclosure and a fully legal license in Santa Barbara County since Prohibition, but there are signs that more might follow. Leslie Pond, the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage

Distillery continued page 11

BLENDING BREAKER It takes at least eight barrels of whiskey to make up the flavor profile of Ascendant Spirits Breaker Bourbon.

Only a certain portion of each is artfully added by the distillers to reach the desired end.

PLUMBED TO THE NINES Every line that runs to the still carefully controls the temperature of the distillation process.

KERNELS OF INSPIRATION Kernels of colored corn displayed in the tasting room are inspiration for one of the products Gertman has plans for.

He wants to produce a red, white, and blue whiskey made from red, white, and blue corn.

Distillery from page 7 Control District Administrator for Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo counties, said he’s seen an uptick in distilleries and interest in opening a distillery on the Central Coast.

“I’ve just seen more people asking about it,” Pond said. “I’m getting these questions on a monthly basis right now, versus three or four years ago when no one was asking about it.”

Businesses that want a liquor-maker license include TapIt Brewing Company in San Luis Obispo, while successful licensed makers currently include Re:Find Spirits in Paso Robles, Ventura Limoncello in Ventura, and now Ascendant Spirits in Buellton.

The right stuff Most of the pieces that make up Ascendant Spirits came together late in 2011, but the last piece wasn’t ready until January 2012, when Gertman finally got the gas turned on, which powers the burner that creates the steam to cook his brew.

As the distillery starts to become a part of the artisan liquor market in California, the friends and family backing the product think the pieces that are the distillery’s identity are stacked in the right places.

Gertman’s father Paul, who has started and sold many healthcare-related businesses over his lifetime, said his son has more than just a passion for making good whiskey. He said his son has business sense, too, which can take an artfully crafted product further.

“Steve combines both of those elements,” Paul said. “It’s that combination that’s necessary.”

Investing in high-quality equipment, starting a business in a growing industry, and assembling a board of directors that includes the former president of Jack Daniels, Stephen Thompson, are some of things Paul said were sound business decisions.

Vice President of Sales Kyle Herman said he signed on because when he met Gertman, he found someone with integrity of character who was passionate about developing a viable product.

“I knew I was going to be selling the truth,” Herman said.

“It’s about doing it right, because if you do it right, everything falls into place.”

Contact Staff Writer Camillia Lanham at clanham @santamariasun.com.

WINE TEST Gertman and his assisant Anthony Cano try their hand at Sauvignon blanc brandy with a small test still.

AMBITIOUS REALITY Now a master distiller in his own distillery, Gertman only took two years to go from learning to distill to creating his own products.

TEMPERATURE CONTROLLED Cano checks the temperature gauge during the distillation process.

RUNNING HOT Every time the liquid moves down the column it is heated and cooled, which causes the alcohol to refine even further and have a higher proof. At the end of the distillation, water is added to the alcohol to “proof it down� and make it drinkable.

SPIRITS RISING Steam increases the temperature of the Sauvignon blanc at the beginning of the distillation process, causing the upper part of the column to fill.

SEPARATION ANXIETY Gertman and Cano check the smell of the alcohol regularly in order to determine the cuts of the distillation process.

DENSE LIQUID Gertman uses a densitometer to check the proof of the alcohol coming out of the still.

BOOZE BOTTLES Breaker Bourbon bottles are in stock, ready for their labels and their liquid.

MIDDLE MEN Fermenters turn the initial batch of grain and water into a sort of liquor-brew, before it gets pumped into the still for its launch into spiritdom.

APPRENTICE REFLECTS MASTER Gertman teaches his artisan distiller, Cano [reflected in the still], what he started learning from the master distiller at Breckenridge Distillery in Colorado just over one year ago.

FIRST RUN Breaker Bourbon and American Star Vodka are the first products Ascendant Spirits has ready for the market.

Soon to follow will be more vodkas, whiskeys, and some gins.

HAND-BOTTLED One of the perks of being an artisan distillery is that each batch of bottled Ascendant Spirits liquor will be hand-numbered by the crew that bottled it.