peach brandy is an American spirit dating back to the early seventeenth century, made by crushing peaches, distilling the fermented liquid that results, and aging the spirit in oak barrels. (In the United States, popular usage also applies the term to sweetened grape brandy flavored with peaches, although United States law insists that this must be called “peach-flavored brandy.”) From the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, peach brandy was the most prestigious and expensive spirit of American manufacture. From the end of World War II through the first decade of the present century, it was no longer made commercially, but its manufacture has since recommenced as part of the boom in micro-distilling.
Americans are not the only people to have made spirit from peaches. Peach spirit has been, and in some cases still is, a common farm-distillery product in parts of France (where it is known as
The informal nature of their manufacture makes it difficult to trace the history of these spirits or even to determine when they were first made. It is possible that some predate the American peach brandy, but there is no evidence that the English made or knew about peach spirit before colonizing America. Early English distilling manuals discuss “waters” made from the leaves and the flowers of the peach tree, but not from the fruit. Even this was most likely theoretical, as peaches were difficult to grow in England. In North America, quite the opposite was true.
In the early 1600s, when the English started planting colonies in Virginia and the Carolinas, the colonists found peach trees growing wild, descendants of the ones the Spanish planted around Saint Augustine, Florida, in the 1560s. The fruit was so plentiful that the colonists fed their hogs on it, but they also made it into a kind of cider. By the 1640s, this was being distilled. By 1645, Virginia was regulating prices for locally made “aqua vitae or brandy,” setting its worth as half that of “English strong waters.”
As American distillers gained experience, the valuation of peach brandy, in particular, rose. In 1722, Robert Beverley, in his History of Virginia, claimed that peaches yielded “the best spirit next to grapes,” and like the best grape spirits, the brandy was beginning to receive significant barrel maturation. By the end of the century, maturation times of six years or more were common, with such a spirit rivaling imported French brandy in price, the only native spirit to come even close to doing so. It was highly prized for use in punches (see Fish House Punch) and other mixed drinks.
The common grade of peach brandy was made by mashing the fruit with wooden pestles in wooden tubs and fermenting the whole mass before straining off the juice for a double distillation. In the early nineteenth century, however, some distillers moved to crushing the peaches between iron gears, thus cracking the pits, and pressing out the juice before fermentation. This made for a cleaner spirit, and the nuttiness of the pits was held to improve the flavor, although it brought a risk of introducing cyanide into the brandy if the distillation was sloppy and run too far into the tails.
Peach brandy was the leading American spirit in quality, if not quantity, through the 1830s, when rye and bourbon whiskies had improved to the point that they could compete. After that, it remained a regional specialty from Maryland south to Georgia, but the inability to manufacture it on an industrial scale doomed it to increasing irrelevance, and by 1900 less than 400,000 liters were produced (most of that in Maryland’s Eastern Shore) as opposed to just under 500,000,000 liters of grain spirits. Some peach brandy was made after Repeal (Lem Motlow, of Jack Daniel’s, was the best-known producer), but by 1950 the category was dead. The experiments with it starting in the 2010s are still in their early stages, and although they are promising, with at least ten different distilleries making the spirit, it remains to be seen if it can be successfully revived.
Hening, William W. The Statutes at Large, Being a Collection of the Laws of Virginia, vol. 1. New York: 1823.
“Old Times Seen Today.” New York Sun, November 8, 1888, 3.
“Peach brandy,” Vicksburg, Mississippi, Daily Whig, June 25, 1856, 2.
Wachsmuth, John G. Advertisement. Philadelphia Federal Gazette, October 2, 1788, 3.
Wondrich, David. “Is Peach Brandy the Next Hot Spirit?” Daily Beast, December 13, 2016. https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-peach-brandy-the-next-hot-spirit (accessed on August 24, 2019).
By: David Wondrich