Spirit world | Bartlett winery's latest distilled passion wins accolades
Photo/Rebecca Goldfine
Bob Bartlett and his wife, Kathe, are seeing success in their latest venture - distilled spirits made from locally grown fruit
Like starting a business, creating a good wine is all about timing — selecting the fruit, monitoring the fermentation, aging in the appropriate barrel.
Kathe and Bob Bartlett know a lot about wines, as their Gouldsboro company, Bartlett Maine Estate Winery, has won numerous awards over its 30-year history. But recently, market trends have finally aligned for them to pursue another passion: distilling fruit into the intensely flavored spirits, or eau-de-vie, they fell in love with while touring Europe in early ‘90s.
“But the timing wasn’t right,” says Bob about making the spirits when the couple returned to Maine. “Everyone was making vodka ... there was this instant market. It was the juice drink or soda of that generation.”
Now tastes have changed. “Eau-de-vie has gotten more popular,” says Kathe, prompting the couple to form Spirits of Maine Distillery in 2007 and invest in the equipment to make the dry, aromatic spirit that for centuries has been used in Europe as a digestif following a meal.
This spring, two of the Bartletts’ eaux-de-vie took honors at the 2011 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, which drew more than 1,000 entries from 61 countries. The Spirits of Maine pear eau-de-vie won a double gold and its apple brandy earned a silver medal. “We were very excited by the recognition,” says Kathe, noting the awards validate their many years spent perfecting techniques for fermenting fruit.
“We have always been on the early end of experimenting and innovating,” says Bob, who sparked Maine’s nascent wine industry when he and Kathe, part of the ’70s back-to-the-land migration, pushed successfully for legislation to allow manufacturing, wholesaling and retailing of wine in Maine. That led to the production of the winery’s first 200 cases of wine in 1982 and production has doubled nearly every year since then. The Bartletts hope to see the same expansion in spirits. “It keeps it fresh and a creative approach for us … and keeps work from being ho-hum,” says Bob.
Not that there’s any danger of that happening in the spirit world just yet. The couple invested close to $1 million in new equipment, including a hand-hammered copper still, custom-made and imported from Germany.
Once the essence of the fruit has been distilled, the clear liquid can be bottled as eau-de-vie — “water of life” in French — or aged in oak barrels, which impart flavor and color to the final spirit, commonly known as brandy. Some of the 14 oak barrels the Bartletts use come from France, others from Hungary.
But the fruit from which the eau-de-vie is derived is almost all locally produced. The apples, pears, berries and other fruit that make their way through crushing, fermenting and distilling are 90% grown in Maine. “When we were debating where we wanted to move, we thought either Maine or the Hudson Valley area of New York,” says Kathe. The advantage of the New York location was climate and soil suited to growing grapes for wine. But Maine offered an abundance of fruit.
The couple produces about 6,000-8,000 cases a year of spirits, and hopes to expand into the California market and eventually export to Japan and Germany. They have been championing value-added agriculture since their first cases of wine hit distributors back in 1983. Bob says annual revenues today come in just under $1 million, but that’s not the reward when you’re as passionate about fermenting fruit as they are. “Taste that,” he says as he offers a glass of the pear eau-de-vie to a visitor. “That’s why we do it.”
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