Get to Know Eau de Vie | Alcohol Professor

Imagine drinking the purest essence of cherries, plum, blackcurrant, guava, ghost pepper, or basil—not as a flavor layered onto the foundation of gin, or as an artificial addition to vodka, and not even sweetened in a liqueur. In eau de vie, any ingredient comes to life as a spirit, a sippable celebration of a fruit or vegetable or botanical’s sweetness, tartness, earthiness, spiciness, bitterness, and so on. As a category, it flies under the radar: With a few exceptions, it’s mostly spirit connoisseurs and industry insiders who know and love eau de vie; you won’t find much of a selection at your local shop, nor a big crowd snatching it off of shelves. However, a growing number of bars are incorporating it into their menus, both as a cocktail ingredient and a neat pour. They’re tapping into the boundless potential eau de vie boasts with its ability to bring the life of any ingredient to a glass. For that reason, it’s high time more imbibers get to know eau de vie.

“Water of Life” Eau de Vie versus Brandy

The first step is understanding eau de vie, French for “water of life,” especially in the context of brandy—while perhaps not significantly, brandy is a bit more familiar to the American consumer and learning about it may be the main association an imbiber has with eau de vie.

“Brandy is the American [term] for eau de vie in French, or schnapps in German,” says Kevin Pike, who owns Branchwater Farms in New York’s Hudson Valley with wife Robin Touchet. “Brandy is defined by the TTB as any spirit made from fruit that is distilled below 190 proof and bottled at 40 percent ABV or higher. Brandy includes spirits made from all fruits, including grapes.” Eau de vie is made from anything but grapes. It also refers to unaged brandy, which is why brandy enthusiasts will know it—essentially, eau de vie can become “brandy” (or cognac or armagnac), or it can remain “eau de vie” as long as its base is not grape. Though, as Pike also notes, “eau de vie” does not appear in the TTB Class and Type Designation; depending on where it is produced and whether it will be imported, a distiller who sets out to make eau de vie may end up labeling it as “[X fruit/vegetable/botanical] brandy],” or, as Alameda, California’s St. George Spirits does: Bottles of “Aqua Perfecta Basil Eau de Vie” also read “Basil-Flavored Brandy.”

Caitlin Bartlemay photo credit Hood River Distillers

In Hood River, Oregon, Clear Creek Distillery acknowledges the category definitions on its website: “The clear fruit brandies of France also known as eau de vie…Most European countries have a local term for the clear, bone-dry brandies distilled from the regional fruit.” Master distiller for Clear Creek and its parent company Hood River Distillers Caitlin Bartlemay says Steve McCarthy founded Clear Creek in 1985 with a mission to bring the European brandy tradition to the United States, and show American consumers it’s more than a special-occasion, post-dinner sipper.

Rhine Hall Distillery father-daughter cofounders Charlie Solberg and Jenny Solberg Katzman photo credit Rhine Hall Distillery

When establishing Rhine Hall Distillery in 2013, father-daughter cofounder team Charlie Solberg and Jenny Solberg Katzman weighed whether to call their spirits “fruit brandy” or “eau de vie” and decided the former would be more recognizable in the United States. Charlie Solberg played professional hockey in Austria, where he fell in love with the culture around making and enjoying eau de vie with neighbors. The family began producing these spirits and continued to do so after a move to Germany and ultimately back to the United States. After venturing out for college and a job in the tech industry, Jenny Solberg heeded the call of eau de vie back to Chicago to start her own operation. Rhine Hall also clarifies that “eau de vie [is] also known as fruit brandy in the United States” on its website. And over time, a new line of spirits provided an opportunity to use the term on labels.

“We started to produce this tropical line,” Katzman says. “During Covid, the freight to get mangos to Chicago was so high, we had to either end the line or move production [to Mexico]...According to import laws in the US, to import a ‘brandy,’ it needs to be grape-based and that’s not what we were doing. To import an ‘eau de vie’ was something that was approved.” Rhine Hall’s lineup features apple, plum, and pear brandies—and “reserve” or aged versions of each—as well as cherry, apricot, and peach brandies plus mango, pineapple, and banana spirits referred to as brandies on the Rhine Hall site but labeled as eaux de vie on their bottles.

“It’s an indicator that something is more of an eau de vie-style product when you put the fruit’s name in front of ‘brandy,’ it means that spirit is derived right from that fruit,” Katzman explains. These spirits can be made from macerating fruits in alcohol or made entirely from the fruit at hand by mashing it, fermenting it, and distilling it. This is the eau de vie tradition and applies to bottles labeled “eau de vie” or “[fruit] brandy” from American distillers.

A New Frontier for Flavor

St George Basil Eau de Vie Gimlet photo credit Emma K Creative

Eau de vie has been a staple in other cultures for centuries. It was common for families in places like France, Germany, Austria, and Northern Italy to make use of leftover fruit before it rotted by turning pears, plums, apples, cherries, or raspberries into this spirit. Now embraced by modern distillers in the craft spirit movement and slowly but surely growing in its presence on bar menus, eau de vie is seeing a new era in what it’s made from.

In addition to Rhine Hall’s revelatory tropical eaux de vie and St. George’s evocative, herbaceous basil eau de vie, Clear Creek is renowned for—alongside more familiar staples like its signature pear brandy—Douglas Fir Brandy, for which the team carefully and sustainably picks pine buds in order to capture the essence of the Pacific Northwest in a bottle. In Paso Robles, California, Tin City Distillery produces a fiery ghost pepper brandy, as well as orange, cinnamon, fig, mango, and walnut brandies. New Hampshire’s Tamworth Distilling has created Corpse Flower Durian Brandy, and in Mexico, Edenico highlights local flavors with guava, prickly pear, plantain, soursop, and mango eaux de vie. High Wire Distilling Co. in Charleston, South Carolina has in the past offered a watermelon brandy, and Branchwater Farms balances tradition and innovation with Bartlett pear brandy, bosc pear brandy, apple brandy, blackcurrant brandy, cranberry brandy, and beet brandy.

These fruit brandies and eaux de vie demonstrate a signature American penchant for envelope-pushing experimentation, creativity, and innovation. But just as American distillers credit the longer-standing European market for their interest in this category to begin with, they even have a European role model to look to for using eau de vie as a conduit to more unexpected flavors. Austrian master distiller Hans Reisetbauer deftly balances traditional eaux de vie like apple, plum, and pear with more unique expressions like elderberry, ginger, currant, tomato, and carrot. At Branchwater Farms, Pike credits Reisetbauer as a friend, mentor, and collaborator.

Distillers who have been enchanted by eau de vie explain it is a singularly pure way to bottle a fruit, vegetable, spice, or botanical and therefore a time and place.

“There’s a misapprehension in the United States, where brandy has been forgotten about, that it’s something that belongs in Grandma’s crystal decanter on a dusty shelf and not in a bar,” Bartlemay says. “But brandy is agrarian as spirits get. It takes so much grain to make whiskey, but just one fruit from one tree in the backyard to make brandy.”

Pike values Branchwater’s location in the Hudson Valley and relationships with many dedicated fruit farmers. Bartlett pears, Bosc pears, and English Morello cherries all come from the area and make for beautifully evocative brandies. “For a very local story, take the Black Currant [Brandy],” Pike notes. “New York grew more black currants than any other state until Congress banned the fruit under lobbying from the logging industry…Horticulturist Greg Quinn got the law overturned in New York in 2003, and he now has the largest, privately owned currant farm in the U.S. His farm is in Staatsburg, New York, just 15 minutes south of us. We purchased 5,000 pounds of black currants from Greg in 2022 and produced about 650 bottles of Black Currant Brandy.”

The Juice Is Worth the Squeeze: Eau de Vie Education

A fruit brandy or eau de vie distiller in the United States knows this path comes with a second endeavor in addition to production, which is consumer education. There’s work to be done to help consumers get over the belief that brandy is a dusty decanter domain. One challenge to this is the fact that eau de vie is an expensive spirit to make and so can be a pricier bottle. A commercial batch requires a lot of fruit, or whatever the base ingredient is. The solution? Bartenders.

“If somebody is interested in trying brandy, are they more likely to roll the dice on a $15 cocktail using brandy or $40 on a bottle?” Bartlemay reasons.

“Over 95 percent of our business is on-premise,” Katzman says. “We only sell about five percent to retail because consumers don't know what this is like bartenders do.”

Lance Winters, master distiller of St George Spirits

Bartenders create bridges of accessibility between distillers and consumers. They get especially excited over more unique spirits like, say, a mango, basil, or Douglas fir brandy, and utilize it in engaging cocktails that get patrons interested in brandy or eau de vie for themselves.

“Bartenders see a lot more products than the average consumer,” says St. George Spirits master distiller Lance Winters. “When they see all these spirits with bullshit flavors, eau de vie becomes this pathway to a really honest cocktail.” The “best pear martini ever,” for example, won’t come from an artificially flavored pear vodka, Winters adds, but a pear brandy with a splash of unflavored vodka.

Cody Pruitt says he’s “lucky to have quite a range of eaux de vie” at his New York City restaurant Libertine, and he is also planning on highlighting special eau de vie expressions at the forthcoming restaurant he co-owns, Chateau Royale. Libertine offers “some truly incredible products” from Barney Wilczak, who distills in the English Cotswolds, and Chateau Royale will feature another iconic Austrian producer, Rochelt.

“Unfortunately eau de vie as a category has not really gotten a fair shake these days, and the average guest/consumer has very little knowledge of and passion for these products,” Pruitt says. “When a spirit lists a fruit as the predominant ingredient, the general public sadly thinks they’re going to be sweet, instead opting for other categories that they find a bit ‘safer.’ We often give away small splashes of our favorite eaux de vie initially at the end of meals, allowing our guests to experience and learn through tasting. After that first taste, though, nine times out of ten, that person will come back and order a pour of one for themselves on future visits.”

Cody Pruitt, co-owner Libertine restaurant

For cocktails, Pruitt likes to put eaux de vie in dasher bottles and treat them “almost like bitters,” citing as an example that, “a dash of Laurent Cazottes’s Poire Williams eau de vie in an old fashioned can completely transform the drink.”

While American imbibers may feel hesitant around brandies and eaux de vie, all it takes is a memorable cocktail using it or an informed and enthusiastic bartender to ensure them that if they like X fruit or Y vegetable, they will like X or Y eau de vie. As distillers like Katzman focus their sales on bars and restaurants, they create a growing American audience increasingly interested in this agrarian, evocative category.