St. George Spirits

The old naval air station on Alameda Island holds secrets in its bones. Across the bay from San Francisco, where fog rolls through the Golden Gate and salt air mingles with California sunshine, Lance Winters found his calling among the abandoned aircraft hangars in 1982.

St. George Spirits rose from this unlikely ground as a pioneer when American craft distilling was barely a whisper. While Kentucky held fast to bourbon tradition and Scotland guarded single malt secrets, Winters and his team began writing their own rules in a converted World War II hangar. The vast space that once sheltered military aircraft now cradles copper stills, their surfaces catching light from industrial windows that frame views of San Francisco's skyline.

Four decades have passed since those first experimental batches. The distillery that began as an outlier has become an elder statesman of American craft spirits, its copper pot stills standing testament to persistence and vision. Here, single malt whisky shares space with Breaking & Entering bourbon, vodka, absinthe, gin, and brandy—a democracy of spirits that reflects California's restless creativity.

The hangar's concrete floors have absorbed countless hours of experimentation, the kind that built America's craft distilling movement from nothing. Steam rises from mash tuns while the Pacific breeze carries maritime influence through every process. This is whisky-making without apology, where tradition bends to innovation and the frontier spirit lives in every decision.

The stills themselves tell the story—not just of copper and heat, but of choosing the harder path. In 1982, craft distilling meant convincing skeptics and building markets that didn't yet exist. It meant learning by doing, failing forward, and believing that American whisky could be more than bourbon's shadow.

Standing in that hangar today, surrounded by the gentle hum of fermentation and the purposeful gleam of copper, you feel the weight of what began here. The salt air still finds its way inside, the same Pacific winds that carried ships to California's shores now carrying the vapor of American single malt into an uncertain but promising future.