Courtney Iseman

Successful collaborations need not be limited to alcoholic beverages. Coffee, chocolate, and hot sauce are among the many products with flavors that may be compatible with your spirits—and with customers who appreciate them.

Each failure to impress is a missed chance to get someone to try your spirit—yet packaging is expensive, especially on a smaller scale. Here’s how some craft distilleries are elevating lower-cost bottles for brands that shine on the shelves.

For what must be the world’s only single-tree gin, a small distillery in East Africa is going to a few intentional extremes.

There are spirits in the trees, but pines are a source that modern distillers often overlook. Whether using fresh buds or gooey cones for brandies or liqueurs, here’s how a couple of small distilleries in the Northwest are sourcing and distilling them for a distinctive local product.

Spirits made from tree sap or syrup—usually maple, though other possibilities exist—are a widely overlooked opportunity for craft distillers to harness local flavor.

If you’ve built your distilling business to last, there will come a day to breathe new life into the brand and update its look. The first trick is in knowing when that day has come—then comes the soul-searching.

The classic espresso martini is only one example of a happy marriage between coffee and alcohol. Here are some different ways that craft distilleries are incorporating coffee into their spirits and liqueurs.

In the second of two articles on the making of soju and shochu, we take a closer look at the all-important koji mold, and we hear from three different producers of shochu—the light spirit that’s been outselling sake in Japan since 2003.

These two lighter spirits from East Asia have long traditions and remain popular in their home countries, but they are not the same. American drinkers are catching on. In the first of two articles, we look at the differences and then zoom in on craft soju.

With its long-established tradition and unique flavors, aquavit is finding favor among North American drinkers and bartenders—and among craft distillers, who appreciate its familiar process and opportunities for distinctive character.