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We worked with local masons Fred Rouse and Dave Butler. They didn’t believe us when we told them that this was the only such still in the USA.

We had a scale drawing made by Prulho, in centimeters. There was a lot of jawboning.

Here it is in place before they put the bricks around the pot. We insulated the pot with earth, sand, and diatomaceous earth, the way they used to. This means there is retained heat, which is beneficial around the pot. The same heat dissipates with modern cognac-still insulation.

Dave and Fred laying the brick facing. Behind Dave is the brick pillar they built to hold the preheater. Elegant work.

Fred Rouse’s crew. They enjoyed the job.

Turkish workman Ansley checking it out. Note the rebar for finishing the chimney behind the pot and the leftover firebrick under the condenser platform.

Our lovely old, antique still. It makes very good brandy. We moved the operation in 1998, but we still use it once in a while.

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The Still Arrives

Hubert found a beautiful still, wood-fired when assembled in the 1930s, in an abandoned distillery near Cognac. He had it refitted at Prulho, who added two coils to the condenser and shipped it to California.

I had a 16-foot flat bed truck. We figured we could put the container on it, and drove it to the Port of Oakland. WRONG. When the crane tried to load it, it almost blew the tires. The importer took the container to his warehouse and put the crates on this flatbed. Here I am on the way out of Oakland.

When we got to the ranch, we didn’t want to rent a forklift to unload it.

So we took the braces off one side of the scaffold, put a beam at the top, attached a block & tackle, backed the truck underneath the beam, and hooked it to the still’s main pot. You can see the preheater on the ground behind the scaffold. Then we drove out from underneath it.

The scaffold slowly and gracefully warped, depositing the pot on the ground like a baby’s kiss. It was a magic moment.

Here’s the pot on the ground. You can see where the scaffold frame bent.

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The Beginning 

In the summer of 1981, I picked up a hitchhiking Hubert Germain-Robin, whose family had produced cognac since 1781. He told a sad tale of industrialized production, and wanted to return to ancestral methods. He went back to Cognac to look for an old hand-operated still. In June, 1982, I dug the foundation for a small distilling shed up on my ranch. We had zero money: I dug the footings and leveled the site with a mattock and shovel, and poured a slab.

In August, Hubert arrived and helped me put up the shed.

This is me cutting into a stud for a diagonal brace. I found that old metal-cased Craftsman skillsaw in the ranch shop in 1973. I used it for 20 years.

Hubert is holding a center rafter (notice the notch) while I get some nails.

Nailing the rafter.

We used old-fashioned, channel siding and a metal roof, and found old sliding barn doors at a junk-yard.

Here’s how it looked in November, 1982.

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We’re close to an end of the second distillation of a batch of heavy-solids wine we bought from Fetzer. Sauvignon Blanc (a rarely-used but legal grape in Cognac) has an unusual “savage” (I say “feral”) overtone, especially on the palate. “Untamed” is another word. I was once shown an aged cognac from Sauvignon Blanc which had the same ferality. The photos show Joseph Corley checking to see how close we are to the end of the “seconds”, the chalk label on the tank that we make the fresh brandy into (later moved to barrels), and me smelling one of the best Sauvignon Blancs we’ve made: very clean, very aromatic, and pretty soft for fresh distillate at 71%. We like working with these grapes that are rarely or ever distilled: Chenin Blanc, Riesling, Semillon, Muscat. They lend unusual complexity to our blends. Some of today’s brandy will end up in the Old Havana.

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