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New New Holiday Holiday Spirits Spirits These blithe maine libations add kick to holiday cheer.

Now your Rat Pack elixirs can feature real hard liquor from Maine. Pictured: Local 188 mixes up a mean Maine “Simple Holiday Martini” with Freeport-based Cold River Vodka.

With his bearing, confidence, and long brown hair drawn back in a pony tail, Bob Bartlett might call to mind a colonial officer in the American Revolution. He clearly is one of Maine’s pioneers. In 1983, Bartlett opened the first winery in the state, Bartlett Maine Estate Winery. He helped to create the law that made it possible for wineries to have retail shops and tasting rooms in Maine. Recently, he opened the state’s first fruit distillery. Now he has taken his craft to a higher and stunning level with the introduction of two brandnew liquors: a Pear Eau-de-Vie and a Fine Apple Brandy that would make great holiday quaffs. They are unlike anything made in this state. “Sitting around a fire on Christmas Eve watching the snow fall, how about a toast to a truly Maine beverage, and to Maine agriculture, which is struggling in tough times?” says his wife and co-owner, Kathe Bartlett. The eau-de-vie is a digestif that resembles a fine, clear, very dry grappa. “It’s the spirit of the pear, without the sugar,” says Bob Bartlett. Celebrated chef Mario Batali has called this eau-de-vie “delish.” The apple brandy is like cognac, dry but mellow, with hints of vanilla, caramel, oak, and spice. It could be used in any dish that calls for a nice brandy or cognac – or sipped alone at the end of a festive meal.

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Bob Bartlett was an architectural student whose past projects included work on Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti, as well as a clarinet player and glass blower. He moved to Maine with Kathe in 1975. “We had the romantic idea that we could make wine,” he says. “Also a lot of passion, soul, and stubbornness.”

After trying for several fruitless years to grow grapes in Maine’s cold climate, he turned to making native fruit wines–mainly from blueberries, raspberries, apples, and pears–and meads from Maine honey. Now he produces about two dozen wines and spirits in a building he designed, a handwrought stone winery in the Schoodic Peninsula’s piney woods.

The apple brandy and the eau-de-vie are “a natural extension” of all his years of study and experimentation and “trickier to make than the wines,” he says. “They’re the highest form of the art.”

If, as Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “wine is bottled poetry,” then Bartlett’s new spirits are distilled haikus.

Cold River Vodka was launched in 2005 by an exotic quartet: a brain surgeon, a potato farmer, a former Olympic ski instructor, and an expert in micro-brewing (brothers Lee and Donnie Thibodeau and friends Bob Harkins and Chris Dowe, respectively). Their product was almost as unlikely as their career mix.

Most vodka is made from fermented grain, mainly wheat or rye. But they “had heard stories of old timers in Northern Maine making vodka from potatoes,” says Harkins. Donnie, a 6th generation potato farmer in Fryeburg, had spuds to spare. So the four partners decided to try making vodka from Maine potatoes–a small-batch, artisanal brew that would reflect the spirit of the state.

Three years later, critics laud Cold River Vodka’s silky texture and subtle sweetness. One called it “the best American vodka” in 2008. It also won a double gold medal at the 2008 World Spirits Competition in San Francisco. This July, the company released a new product: Blueberry-Flavored Vodka, made with Wyman’s wild Maine blueberries–a dry blend “with a big, lovely nose,” says Donnie Thibodeau.

To celebrate the winter holidays, Lee Thibodeau suggests bringing the outdoors indoors. “I like to sip our vodka over snow,” he says. “Fill a tumbler about three-quarters full of snow and pour the vodka over that.

It’s delicious. Very smooth.”

A renovated barn in the pastoral hills of Union is the home of Sweetgrass Farm Winery and Distillery, which opened in 2007. Co-owner Keith Bodine was a software engineer who wanted a new career and a country setting to raise his family. He worked at several wineries around the country before deciding to create his own winery and distillery in Union, along with wife and co-owner Constance Bodine. Today, they produce several fruit wines, rum, vermouth, even their own vanilla extract.

But the star of their show is Back River Gin, a big, bold, rustic decoction that tastes like Maine in a glass.

Keith Bodine says the gin “is fun to make because it doesn’t need to age at all, and it encourages a lot of creativity. All gin is made from juniper, but beyond that there are infinite possibilities.” After two years of tasting and tweaking, he finally hit on a mix of juniper berries, coriander, cinnamon, Angelica root, lemon peel, ginger root, and wild Maine blueberries. The liquor has a robust, tart, brambly taste, with a hint of anise.

One critic called it “one of the two best gins in the U.S.”

This August, Sweetgrass released a new Cranberry Gin–gin infused with crushed cranberry juice. For some spirits in the holiday spirit, Bodine recommends a “crantini,” a martini made with the cranberry gin and served, perhaps, with a slice of lime for a Christmasy red-and-green combo.

The other maker of spirits in Maine is White Rock Distilleries, in Lewiston. The company produces “about 150 or so” alcoholic beverages, according to marketing director Marguerite Provandie. Most of these are liquors which White Rock imports and bottles, sometimes after adding flavorings. Among the most popular, she says, are the Pinnacle vodkas, Jack rums, and the Baja line of tequilas.

But White Rock does make about a half dozen beverages entirely in Maine, she says, including Sweet Carolina Sweet Tea Vodka, Chateau Pomari Pomegranate Liqueur, and Jolly Flavored Schnapps. For holiday fun, Provandie suggests a “Merry Martini Martini” with Pinnacle Berry Vodka, the pomegranate liqueur and pomegranate juice. Recipes for these and other Maine-made spirits can be found at: portlandmonthly. com/spirits n