Wine Country spirits for spring cocktails

Wine Country is about a lot more than wine. As a new generation of local spirits producers hones its talents in distilling, they’re finding inspiration for their gins, vodkas, whiskeys in a plethora of local ingredients.

Finding an eager audience in those who appreciate good food and wine, this translates to a wealth of local spirits available in our own backyard, which serve as the perfect base for a wide range of cocktails or aperitifs, especially ideal for spring.

Hanson of Sonoma: A grape-based vodka using premium, organically grown grapes that are then infused with a variety of flavors, from cucumber and mandarin to ginger, each one of them certified organic. The vodka is pot-and-column distilled, filtered and made with Sonoma Valley well water. Founded in 2012, the distillery is family-owned and run. hansonofsonoma.com

The Cocktail: Tosca’s Polo Cup

1½ ounces Hanson Vodka

1 ounce elderflower syrup

1 ounce lemon juice

1 dash of Bitter Truth Orange Bitters

2 cucumber slices

4 basil leaves

7 mint leaves

2 ounces Fever Tree Soda

Shake all ingredients in a cocktail shaker very hard. Add soda and double strain over fresh ice in a Collins glass. Add a cucumber ribbon, basil and mint bouquet for garnish.

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Jardesca: A proprietary eau-de-vie (a fruit brandy) made in Sonoma from sweet and dry white wines that are double distilled into a fortified wine, then steeped in a garden’s worth of botanicals. Jardesca is meant to be enjoyed on ice or with a dash of citrus, the goal being to better coax out its aromas of peppermint, orange blossom and cardamom. With a splash of mineral water or sparkling wine and garnish of basil or mint, it will evoke spring in a glass. Among the grapes used are viognier, grown in Alexander Valley, while the 10 infused botanicals run the gamut from Bay laurel to pink peppercorn. jardesca.com

The Cocktail: Jardesca Verde

3 ounces of Jardesca

Basil or mint sprigs

Mineral water

Ice

Muddle the basil or mint in a stemless wine glass or rocks glass. Add ice. Pour in the Jardesca, and add a splash of mineral water.

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Monument Valley Distillers: From Calistoga, small batches of bourbon, whisky and brandy are being made. The most iconic is The Duke, a Kentucky Straight Bourbon named for John Wayne, whose son Ethan is a partner in the distillery with Jayson Woodbridge, the Napa Valley vintner behind such wines as Hundred Acre, Layer Cake and Cherry Pie. To make The Duke, they went back to Wayne’s private bourbon collection to find inspiration; some of the bourbons dated back to 1963. The goal was to re-create some of the flavors within the rare bottles, using small-batch techniques and heavily charred American oak barrels for aging. dukespirits.com

The Cocktail: The Duke Highball

2 ounces of Duke Bourbon

Fever Tree Ginger Ale

Slices of orange, lemon, lime

Pour the bourbon into a highball glass, top with ginger ale and garnish with the fresh slices of orange, lemon and lime.

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Spirit Works Distillery: The grain-to-glass operation within Sebastopol’s The Barlow center. Run by husband-and-wife team Ashby and Timo Marshall, Spirit Works does everything in-house, from milling the grain to creating the mash to distilling its gin, vodka and sloe gin on site and aging some of it in barrel. Its gin is made from Hard Red Winter wheat infused with juniper berries and then a mix of botanicals, some of them traditional, some inspired by what’s possible in California. There’s a hint of coriander, citrus and cardamom in the propriety blend. spiritworksdistillery.com

The Cocktail: California Negroni

1½ ounces Spirit Works Gin

1½ ounces Vya Sweet Vermouth

1½ ounces Campari

Orange twist

Stir together with ice. Strain and garnish with the orange twist.

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Square One Organic Spirits: A pioneer in organic vodka, Novato-based Square One offers a range of flavors, including a newly released Bergamot orange vodka, made from the same organic rye used to make its other vodkas. This one’s infused with organic Bergamot (a crucial component of Earl Grey tea), mandarin, tangerine and navel oranges as well as ginger, coriander and juniper botanicals, akin to a gin, then sweetened conservatively with organic tapioca-root syrup. It’s a fine addition to their other savory offerings, including Square One Basil and Square One Botanical. Unfiltered, the Bergamot can appear hazy when chilled, a nod to the essential citrus oils within, and entirely delicious: grassy, floral, tangy. squareoneorganicspirits.com

The Cocktail: Sherry Cobbler

1 ounce Square One Bergamot

1½ ounces Manzanilla or Dry Amontillado Sherry

2 slices of orange

3 raspberries

- Touch of agave

- Mint sprig

Muddle one slice of orange and two raspberries. Add remaining items and shake with ice. Strain into a julep or stemless wine glass filled with crushed ice and layered with remaining raspberries and orange. Garnish with mint.

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Tempus Fugit Spirits: Novato-based Tempus Fugit ventures into the annals of history to re-create and re-imagine ingredients and spirits once common to the American cocktail scene that may have lost their way over time. Among their offerings is absinthe, famously banned in the United States until 2007, and such things as Crème de Violettes, Crème de Cacao, Crème de Menthe, Crème de Noyaux and a range of aromatic bitters. Its Gran Classico Bitter was named one of the best 130 spirits in the world by “The Spirit Journal,” acknowledging its successful recipe for the bitter aperitif liqueur inspired by one in Italy from the 1860s.

The Cocktail: L’Aviation

½ ounce Crème de Violettes

½ ounce Maraschino liqueur

1½ ounces dry Gin

¾ ounces fresh lemon juice

Place ingredients and ice in a shaker and shake hard for seven seconds, double strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with a lemon peel.

Virginie Boone is a freelance wine writer based in Sonoma County. She can be reached at virginieboone@yahoo.com and followed on Twitter @vboone.