St George Spirits: The Tasting Room
After learning about Qi Lapsang Souchong Tea Liqueur, writing about the Aqua Perfecta liqueurs produced by this company and knowing Hangar One vodka I had decided a stop by the St. George Spirits tasting room was in order, during a recent trip to San Francisco. This plan was reinforced when Lucy, from St George Spirits left a comment on the Qi post. We exchanged a couple emails and she was so friendly that I knew I had to stop in.
This was actually to be my first stop after arriving in San Francisco and getting settled into my hotel. Well, the best laid plans sometimes run amuck. My flight was delayed due to “low cloud cover” in San Francisco and by the time I got in it was later in the day than I had hoped. I tabled my visit until the following day which had a couple of ramifications.
I took the ferry across to Alameda, the home of St George Spirits. They are located in the old Alameda Naval Air Station in a gigantic old hangar - hence the name of their vodka, Hangar One. They are just a short 10 or 15 minute walk from the ferry landing, although if you choose to go this route wear decent walking shoes and be very aware of the ferry schedule because if you miss one, it can be a long wait until the next one and there isn’t a lot to do in the area!
I arrived at the facility shortly after it opened. Upon entering the tasting room I introduced myself, as I had hoped to get a tour of the facilities - something that is not normally available. As luck would have it, they were getting ready to film a program of some sort about Qi so a full tour would not be possible. Having said that, every attempt was made to get me into as many areas and to let me see as much as possible. I have to tell you that these are some of the nicest people and they really took time to take care of me, in many ways!
They were in process of distilling Hangar One Mandarin Blossom. The distiller was watching the process, tasting to gauge the progress and was eager to share his considerable knowledge of distilling in general and St George’s philosophy. 
As I was so enjoying the conversation and I really am a bad “reporter” I did not take any notes while we were talking. My comments here will be rather generic because I don’t want to take the chance of misquoting but the distiller spent a good 30 minutes (perhaps more!) with me, explaining the process, types of stills, and generally answering all of my questions. All the while we were sampling the current state of the vodka being produced. See the little “drinking fountain” to the right? I’d like to have one installed in my house! 
The nectar coming from that spout was amazingly bright with clean, crisp mandarin flavor.
Large commercial distillers generally use column stills which allows them to do continuous distillation and produces a pure, flavorless spirit - basically the definition of vodka. Artisan producers, on the other hand, use pot stills which requires a hands on approach to ensure the quality, consistency and flavor desired are attained. The one challenge with pot stills is that by their very nature, everything you put in is what comes out, in one way or another. The stills used at St George (and most other artisan producers) are technically pot stills, however they do have certain column still elements which allow them more control over their final product. These stills are made to St George’s specifications by Holstein a custom manufacturer in Germany.
Different elements within the ingredients have different boiling points and therefore come out of the mix at different times. One of the key roles of the distiller is in balancing these elements in the final product. There are three primary boiling points and the products that are released at each of these points are known as heads, hearts and tails.
The heads are sometimes a bit bitter but contain the floral elements of whatever is being distilled. (Side note: perfumes are also created using a distilling process.) Most of this distillation will not be included in the final product but a certain amount is and it’s mostly responsible for what we think of as “the nose”. 
In the case of this mandarin blossom vodka I was actually thinking of dabbing a bit of it behind my ears before going out that evening!
The hearts are just what they sound like: the heart of the distillation, the prime elements of taste and smell. All of the hearts goes into the final product.
The last third, the tails, is similar to the heads in that a certain amount of it will be part of the final mix but much of it is drawn off for other purposes. When you get to the tails the flavors are much more intense. You want a certain amount in your final product as this is what sticks with you - the body so to speak. It’s the element that gives the distillation some weight. However, too much of it results in a bitter taste.
In my mind this process is like making tea. If you leave your tea leaves in your hot water for too short of a time, your tea smells good but has very little actual flavor. If you leave it in too long, you have something that hits your mouth with lots of tannin or bitterness which overwhelms the more subtle flavors. 
You need to find that sweet spot in the middle that gives you the aroma, the taste of the tea and enough body so that you feel you are drinking something more than hot water.
And just as those times will vary for each type of tea and the attributes of each specific batch so will the heads, hearts and tails phases vary in the distilling process. And this is why a good distiller is so important.
As you might imagine with all the decisions to be made, as well as the fact that the taste of the ingredients themselves will vary from year to year, the distiller is faced with an interesting challenge - keeping the spirit consistent enough from batch to batch so that the end customer gets what they are expecting when they purchase a bottle, yet taking advantage of the specific characteristics of each batch of ingredients and optimizing the mix of heads, hearts and tails for each batch. No easy task, in my estimation.
To minimize the shock to customers individual batches are sometimes blended so that only slight variations are present from bottle to bottle. 
Although, I would hate to be totally surprised by the taste of any liquor that I’ve come to know, I couldn’t help but thinking that it would be sort of cool to have distillations that were unique unto themselves based on the ingredients and distiller’s skills. More like wine. Maybe that will be the next step in the evolution of artisinal spirits.
In an upcoming post I’ll tell you about the tasting part of my tour. Just for you my dear reader, I tasted every single offering! And just for me, I tasted a few things the folks at St George make just for themselves! Okay, maybe they were both all about me - but you’ll get the benefit of it all! The photo to the right is of their lab where small batches are made both to test for commercial viability and some are made just for use within the company. I may need to change jobs… Wouldn’t it be fun to have one of these little stills in your kitchen? Too bad it’s illegal everywhere but New Zealand. Although apparently, in the US, you can distill alcohol at home if it will be used for fuel…
My thanks go out to everyone at St George Spirits for treating me so well, sharing so much information with me and answering all of my numerous questions!
St. George Spirits Tasting Room
2601 Monarch Street
Alameda, CA 94501
Wed - Sat, 12 - 7
Sun, 12 - 6
I once worked in this hangar where the distillery is at now. I was 18 and it was 1955. I had a Civil Service typist’s job and worked in a small office at one side of the hangar. Walking through the hangar one day, I wasn’t looking where I was going and slammed into the edge of a newly painted airplane wing that was hanging down on a cable from a girder above. The cut at the edge of my left eye was an inch long. I was taken to the Naval doctor on Base where my wound was stitched up. I am 70 now and I still have the scar from this accident! I’m looking forward to taking a leap back in time and visiting Hangar One Distillery, where I hope to sample the liquor and purchase some.