Hangar One

Ansley Coale and Jorg Rupf played major roles in bringing old-fashioned European distilling methods to California in the early 1980s. Twenty years later, they decided to turn vodka into something genuinely wonderful.

Jorg Rupf brought a German Holstein pot still to California in 1982. He founded
St George Spirits and began to hand-distill pears, cherries, and raspberries, plus such exotic items as kiwis and quinces. In 1996, his pear brandy won best of show in the prestigious Destillata competition (Austria).

Also in 1982, Ansley Coale partnered with 10th-generation French distiller Hubert Germain-Robin to found ALAMBIC in Mendocino County, where an antique cognac pot still turns out some of the world’s finest spirits. Hubert was the first distiller to make serious use of high-quality grapes for distillation. In 1998, the Robb Report named Germain-Robin XO the best distilled spirit in the whole wide world.

In August, 2001, sitting at Jorg's kitchen table, the two men agreed that there was a lot of room for improvement in how vodka was made and in how producers talked about it. Grey Goose and Belvedere had recently created a market for $30 vodkas, and that’s what a hand-made vodka using real ingredients would have to cost.

Jorg spent months developing some very special vodkas, vodkas that both 1) taste great and 2) keep their quality after you opened the bottle, which is technically very difficult when the distiller is working with fresh fruit. Jorg drew on 20 years of experimentation and experience in preparing and distilling fresh fruit.

Meanwhile, Ansley designed the package and worked on ways to communicate what was special about these vodkas. He chose the name Hangar One because Jorg's distillery was located in a former military structure on the old Alameda Naval Air Station.

The first bottles were put on the market in April, 2002. What happened next was amazing: three magazines named Hangar One “vodka of the year.” Respected experts called it the finest vodka ever produced. The phone began to ring, a novel experience for men who had up to now produced very limited amounts of “niche” spirits.

The response to Hangar One vodka was so positive that Jorg prepared to move into a larger hangar. Ansley founded Craft Distillers to market the vodkas (along with the original Germain-Robin & St George brandies & liqueurs).

Ansley and Jorg hope that people’s experience with Hangar One makes them want to explore the rich world of small-production hand-distilled spirits.