St. George Spirits

California’s St. George Spirits was founded in 1982. Over more than three decades, the distillery has grown into a diversified operation with a portfolio that includes single malt whiskey, agricole rum, absinthe, and several gins, vodkas, brandies, and liqueurs. Called “a leading light in the American artisanal spirits movement” (Whisky Advocate), St. George has also been inducted into the Spirit Journal Hall of Fame, honored with the 2015 Craft Whiskey Producer of the Year award by Whisky Magazine, and named “best craft distillery in America” by Thrillist. Its spirits are available widely across the US and internationally. The distillery is open to the public for tours and tastings and hosts ~30,000 visitors each year.

St. George Spirits was founded in 1982 by Jörg Rupf, an immigrant from Freiburg, Germany new to California. Rupf fell in love with the Bay Area’s nascent food culture and its embrace of top-quality raw materials, which resonated with what he knew from his family’s generations of distilling in the Black Forest. Inspired by the spectacular quality of local fruit, Rupf began making unaged fruit brandy on a single, 65-gallon Holstein pot still in a wood shed he built by hand—modest beginnings that brought Old World distilling methodologies to the New World and “inspired the American artisan distillation movement.” (NPR)

Though Rupf retired in 2010, St. George continues to be owner-operated, now by master distiller Lance Winters and head distiller Dave Smith. Moreover, Rupf’s reverence for extraordinary raw materials and exacting standards continue to shape every spirit that bears the St. George name.

St. George's family of spirits has grown over the decades, and the American craft distillation movement has grown with them. The more that the landscape has changed, the more important their philosophy has become: make amazing spirits, unlike anything else available on the market, with innovation, quality, and integrity.