Each and every bottle coming along the bottling line at Ventura Spirits is receiving a hand-pressed stamp burned on the wooden stopper. It’s a map of California. And – say the founders – each drop of the spirit it contains, has the Golden State indelibly marked to its flavors too.
"We're just pumping agave spirit over to the bottling line, and it's unique in that it's made from agave plants grown here on the Central Coast," explains Henry Tarmy, one of the founders of this boutique craft distillery, which aims to create spirits which celebrate the agricultural beauty of California’s Central Coast.
"We started out with [making] Wilder Gin, which is distilled with a whole bunch of native California botanicals. The basic idea with Wilder was to try to communicate something about the sensory experience of taking a walk up in the hills of the Central Coast," said Tarmy.
This is one of a handful of distilleries making an agave spirit and they are using agave grown here on the Central Coast, in Goleta.
They also distill drinks from Ojai’s famous pixie tangerines and Ventura county’s strawberries, and not only do they source ingredients from local farmers, but they’ve found that it addresses a variety of issues for farmers from a lack of water to figuring what to do with their less aesthetically pleasing fruit and reducing food waste.
"There's just a huge influx of interest from farmers for whom agave solves a problem where, say, you're growing pistachios or walnuts, for example, you might be using up in the Central Valley, 50 acre inches of water a year versus something like three for agave," explains Tarmy.
"When we're making a strawberry liqueur or blueberry liqueur, we're getting in organic blueberries from Waters Ranches Moorpark. Basically, all the flavor and all of the alcohol is coming from blueberries. And we do something similar with Central Coast strawberries. Press off the juice, ferment into wine, distill into brandy, brandy and juice in the barrel," he said.
The aroma of fresh oranges fills the air at the distillery, as the zest is removed from around 2000 pounds of locally-grown Valencia oranges, which will add flavor to one of their newer drinks which is growing in popularity.
"Angeleno Amaro," says Tarmy. "Amaro is an umbrella category. Amaros are going to be bitter, sweet and herbal in nature. So this is our take and it uses a whole bunch of fresh California citrus zest. So that's where all these oranges are going to go."
The distillery has grown in the ten years since they launched, with products now on sale in retailers from Trader Joes to Vons/Whole Foods. But as well as Tarmy, his fellow founders Andrew and Anthony Caspary are here, hands on – mopping floors and hand pressing bottle-stoppers and – of course – helping to serve samples.
'In the case of the Pixies that are in the bottle you're going to try, all of this year's production came from basically packing line sorting rejects," explains Caspary. "They were too big or too bumpy or not pretty or misshapen. In our food system, there's a lot of quality decisions that are made on the basis of appearance and cosmetics that has nothing to do with the quality inherently of the food itself. And so we are absolutely thrilled when we can make use of something that can't find a home. It's better for the farmers because they are gleaning some value where they otherwise might not."
It’s not drinking - it’s a tasting, Caspary reminds me. The Amaro has an interesting flavor, fruity with a peppery kick. It's not only sampled, straight, but makes up part of a spritz-style ready-made cocktail which they sell in a can.
Tarmy says they can see the potential of a drink like Amaro, which takes the flavors of the Central Coast to anywhere around the world, but in some things, they aim to keep it small and local.
"There's a nice balance here between products that are scalable and that we want to put out into the world and stuff that's always going to stay small. We have a chance to push Angeleno Amaro to the ends of the earth, possibly, but some of this stuff is always going to stay small and weird, and that's kind of how we like it," said Tarmy.
So if you fancy a walk in the mountains, you can do it with a slice of lime and your feet up.
