Out of the Jar by Gestalten is a new book about the best, and some of the most unusual spirits from small distillers around the world. These are spirits made by a new generation of distillers who are using combinations of rare fruits, herbs, grains and spices to reinvent and reinterpret high octane recipes for alcoholic drinks. The book features distillers that are crafting these by hand from the distllery to to bottling the final product. The video above introduces a hands-on whiskey maker from a prohibition-era distillery in Brooklyn, a passionate mezcalero who doesn’t chicken out from an unusual recipe, and a Berlin-based artisan whose rum is taking the world’s best cocktail bars by storm. It’s a nice little video short with quality production value, and it makes me want to go find some of the booze featured here.
Distillery
Christoph Keller’s Stählemühle Aqua Vitae.
When former art publisher Christoph Keller came across Stählemühle, an old out of service mill that had been converted to a schnapps distillery, he took upon the task of bringing it back to life.
The result of his labors is Aqua Vitae fruit brandies produced in small, high-quality batches. The brandies made at Stählemühle have won more than 170 international awards including “Brandy of the Year 2011.”
Stählemühle currently produces around 70 various spirits and liquors made from the most exotic and obscure fruits imaginable. From greengages, damsons, russet apples, to ribes, common medlars, and European mountain ash.Keller is helping to keep these semi-extinct fruits alive and is making sure that Stählemühle is a solid example of how a sustainable and organic operation can be achieved on a small farm with only a small amount of land, a lot of know-how and the work of four hands.
If you happen to be in Berlin on April 20th, for 100 Euro you can attend a special tasting event sponsored by Gestalten. If I were there I’d make sure I was going. (If I were lucky enough to be one of the 25 it is limited to that is)
Modular 4 