Spirit Tasting: SanTan Distillery

In the “spirit” (😜) of giving equal time to things other than wine when the opportunity arises… we had a great time at the “Bottles & Bites” event at the Phoenix Botanical Garden. They partner with local SanTan Distillery, who have a special line of spirits whose proceeds go directly to the garden. As part of the partnership, they were trying out a new pairing tasting event format, and we were delighted to be a part of it. The location was lovely, and they launched the event by greeting us with a welcome margarita and a small appetizer. We had no idea you could make a legit margarita with bourbon - all the drinks but the dessert drink were bourbon-based, which was more of an education for me than for Craig.

Yeah… the margarita was so good, I drank it all before getting a photo, but here you are, a dissatisfying photo of empty glasses set strategically on a high top, from which we could watch all the other people enjoying the venue (and live music).

I took some photos of the setup while waiting for the next round of food/drinks (see captions):

The vegetation along the garden paths was very pretty.

A Crested Wordleberry Cactus. Very cool.

Set in this big open tent structure in the middle of a field, they presented the pairings to us.

A view from outside the dome.

First course, a smoked short rib over mashed potatoes paired with “Cola Me Old Fashioned,” an old fashioned made with Coca Cola reduction syrup, their bourbon and cherry bitters. It was YUM and, not surprisingly, my favorite pairing of the evening.

Next up, Al Pastor Pork Taco paired with “Tropical Waltz” - a crazy sweet tiki drink made with their bourbon, lemon juice, pineapple juice, Velvet Falernum, Gold Glitter Vanilla, and tiki bitters. It was all so good.

Dessert was a churro paired with a caramello espresso martini drink. Craig liked the bourbon enough to buy a bottle.

Our participation in the event came with an invitation for a free tour of their distillery. We were all over that, so a couple of weeks later, off we went to take the tour. We’ve taken a lot of distillery/winery/brewery tours and this one was probably top 10 for fun, an over the top amount of tastings and lots of great info we didn’t know about the distilling process!

SanTan started as just a brewery, but added spirits recently. They are the largest independent in Arizona.

So much stainless steel!

Tour started with grain tasting and our fabulous tour guide.

This is Clifford the big red mash press. lol

The Still, where all the magic happens.

These are the head, heart and legs (see below).

Storage for all the yummy spirits.

An old Dr Pepper bottling line they use.

Some bits of knowledge we acquired:

Each batch that comes off the still is separated into the “head, heart and legs” - the “head” is what first boils off the mash and is very pure alcohol. Too pure to sell and has almost no taste, but can be mixed with other things if they want to adjust the alcohol content. The “heart” is what comes out at the middle of the process, has around the right alcohol content and the best taste. The “legs” is the trash part of the process - but it can be used to clean things!

We also learned that in Arizona, barrels of spirits age faster that in other parts of the country (I’m looking at you Kentucky!). It’s primarily because it’s warm year round. Even in the winter, when it’s cold at night, it warms up enough during the day. They even have a complicated scheme for rotating barrels up and down the shelving in the warehouse, to take advantage of heat rising.

There was much more - go see them if you are in the area.