Hangar One Vodka

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Ansley Coale and Jorg Rupf played major roles in bringing old-fashioned European distilling methods to California in the early 1980s. Twenty years later, they decided to turn vodka into something genuinely wonderful.

Jorg Rupf brought a German Holstein pot still to California in 1982. He founded St George Spirits and began to hand-distill pears, cherries, and raspberries, plus such exotic items as kiwis and quinces. In 1996, his pear brandy won best of show in the prestigious Destillata competition (Austria).

Also in 1982, Ansley Coale partnered with 10th-generation French distiller Hubert Germain-Robin to found ALAMBIC in Mendocino County, where an antique cognac pot still turns out some of the world’s finest spirits. Hubert was the first distiller to make serious use of high-quality grapes for distillation. In 1998, the Robb Report named Germain-Robin XO the best distilled spirit in the whole wide world.

In August, 2001, sitting at Jorg's kitchen table, the two men agreed that there was a lot of room for improvement in how vodka was made and in how producers talked about it. Grey Goose and Belvedere had recently created a market for $30 vodkas, and that’s what a hand-made vodka using real ingredients would have to cost.

Jorg spent months developing some very special vodkas, vodkas that both 1) taste great and 2) keep their quality after you opened the bottle, which is technically very difficult when the distiller is working with fresh fruit. Jorg drew on 20 years of experimentation and experience in preparing and distilling fresh fruit.

Meanwhile, Ansley designed the package and worked on ways to communicate what was special about these vodkas. He chose the name Hangar One because Jorg's distillery was located in a former military structure on the old Alameda Naval Air Station.

The first bottles were put on the market in April, 2002. What happened next was amazing: three magazines named Hangar One “vodka of the year.” Respected experts called it the finest vodka ever produced. The phone began to ring, a novel experience for men who had up to now produced very limited amounts of “niche” spirits.

The response to Hangar One vodka was so positive that Jorg prepared to move into a larger hangar. Ansley founded Craft Distillers to market the vodkas (along with the original Germain-Robin & St George brandies & liqueurs).

Ansley and Jorg hope that people’s experience with Hangar One makes them want to explore the rich world of small-production hand-distilled spirits.

Timeline

1982 Jorg Rupf founds St George Spirits

1982 Ansley Coale & Hubert Germain-Robin found ALAMBIC

1983 Jorg releases his first brandies.

1987 Germain-Robin Fine (VSOP) is released.

1988 Jorg’s pear brandy named Orange County Competition's Best of Show

1996 Lance Winters shows up at St George

1997 St George Pear brandy wins best of show at the prestigious Destillata competition

1998 Germain-Robin XO Brandy named world’s best distilled spirit by Robb Report

2000 Germain-Robin releases $350 Anno Domini. It is immediately declared “one of the top five cognacs of the century.”

2001 Rupf & Coale lay foundation for Hangar One

2002 first small bottlings released

2003 Craft Distllers founded

2004 St George moves to larger hangar

Under various circumstances, Ansley Coale was apprentice to a dhow-builder on the African coast, walked from Lahoul to Chem, presented a graduate seminar in Roman numismatics and Tacitus’ Historiae at UC Berkeley, performed Argentinian tango for paying audiences, and restored Victorian buildings in San Francisco. Ansley aspires to be a devoted father and husband and to leave the planet at peace with what he did on it. In 1982, he and Hubert Germain-Robin founded ALAMBIC, INC., widely regarded as producing some of the world’s finest distilled spirits.

Jorg Rupf is a nonchalant perfectionist. He’s a concert violinist, the godfather of American artisan distillers, a brilliant strategist, and was formerly the youngest judge in Germany. In fact, that’s how he came here. As a judge with the German Ministry of Culture, Jorg was sent to study government funding of the arts at UC Berkeley. Once in the Bay Area, he was overwhelmed by the abundance of California's amazing fruit and, well, he’s still here distilling it all.

Jorg comes from a long line of eau de vie distillers in Germany’s Black Forest, so naturally, Jorg’s concoctions center around eaux de vie (unaged fruit brandies). It’s his incredible understanding of how to draw flavor out of fruit and create balance in a spirit that make Hangar One fruit-infused vodkas so vivid.

Lance Winters used to be a nuclear engineer. He slid into beer-making. One day, he found himself on the doorstep of St George Spirits with a bottle of homemade whiskey in his hand. Jorg tasted it, and Lance has been part of St George ever since.

“Screwing around is where all good ideas come from,” says Lance. He keeps time free to cruise the produce marketsfor inspiration. “When you turn fruit into an eau de vie, it’s like writing an ode to it, like Pablo Naruda writing odes to everyday things. You have to see the fruit for the incredible thing it is.”

Big companies bring out new flavors of vodka based on market trends. Lance says, “Can you imagine Pablo Naruda going out and asking people what they would like to hear an ode about? No! You get inspired, you find something, and you inspire other people towards it.”

Lance loves to create experiences that you remember a long time. He delights in crafting spirits “like a high quality perfume, something transformative.”