the drunken botanist / By Amy Stewart

St. George Spirits

(Aug. 11, 2011)  “Is it all right?” asks the tasting room bartender Chris, looking down quizzically at my barely touched vodka shot.

“It’s fantastic,” I tell him. “Just pacing myself.” He pours the rest out, but he’s not happy about it.

The still at St. George Distillery, as photographed with a weird old Rolleiflex. PHOTO BY VIC STEWART

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And it really is a damn fine vodka, a vodka to put Goose-swillers in their place, a surprisingly floral and complex and lovely blend of two vodkas actually, one distilled from wheat and the other from viognier grapes. If you have ever felt that white wine wastes your time, what with all that fruit and oak and dismally low alcohol content, this grape-based spirit will get you right down to business: It’s crisp and dry and straight to the point. 

I’m at the St. George Spirits distillery, which is located on a decommissioned naval base in Alameda, Calif., working my way through a $15 tasting that they refer to as Basic Training.  (I get the impression that there was once a more extensive training — an officers’ school, perhaps — from a sign informing visitors that they are no longer offering full pours.  Ten half-shots of vodka in an hour is enough for anyone, even at a naval base.)

I have brought along my father, who is puzzled by the idea of tasting vodka at all, much less before noon on a Sunday, but who has ridden gamely along in the hopes of catching some Margaret Bourke-White-esque shots of distillery equipment — copper pots and so forth — with his Rolleiflex. This turns out to cause quite a stir in the tasting room.  He hates it when people make a fuss over his weird-looking old film camera, but we’re at a place where they make booze in handmade copper pots. If you don’t want people to comment on your camera, don’t point it at a room of slightly drunk hipsters who have paid admission to look at weird old equipment, that’s all I’m saying.

That first pour was Hangar One, a vodka named after the hangar in which the distillery is housed, only when it came time came to hand out hangars (I learn on the tour), they couldn’t get into hangar one and had to settle for hangar 21.  The problem is that any bottle of booze with the number 21 on it seems to scream “drink this in its entirety on your twenty-first birthday, consequences be damned,” which might not get a craft distillery the kind of media coverage it’s looking for. (My father rolls his eyes at a joke from the tour guide about how “Hangar 18” would be a better name for that sort of vodka anyway, since anyone who can be drafted should be able to drink. “Somebody tell that kid we haven’t had a draft since before he was born,” Dad whispers. But we agree to let the kid do his job and we’ll do ours, which is to drink vodka and make photographs.)

The next pour is — you may need to sit down for this — a mandarin blossom-infused vodka soaked in nothing — nothing! — but the honeyed heavenliness of citrus flowers, along with a little peel to amplify the flavor. How many times have you walked past an orange tree in bloom and thought, “What I wouldn’t give to drink a glass of that at 80 proof right about now?” Today you can.

It really is the perfect marriage of flowers and booze, yet still I manage to take a sip and set the glass down. Chris eyes me suspiciously again. I don’t tell him what the rest of my day looks like, that I have a long drive ahead and actual work to do at the end of it.  The twenty-something drinkers next to me are celebrating someone’s birthday; they have decided to get “daytime drunk” starting right this minute. Let them make up for my abstemious behavior.

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