As Above So Below distillery unveils Apricot Eau de Vie brandy

Santa Fe’s As Above So Below distillery incorporated the community’s apricots to create its limited-edition Apricot Eau de Vie brandy.

“We started this project last year and what we did was put a call out to the community through apps like Nextdoor and Facebook and said we’re looking to make this brandy, ‘Can we come pick your tree?’ ” said Caley Shoemaker, co-founder and master distiller. “And it was great because we were able to pick quite a few trees here in Santa Fe.”

The distillery team picked and pitted apricots for three weeks straight to make 216 bottles of the brandy. Bottles are $60 each and are only available for sale in the distillery’s tasting room, located at 545 Camino de la Familia in Santa Fe.

“There are about 20 pounds of apricots in every bottle, and they’re not the full-size bottles either,” Shoemaker said. “They are 375 milliliter bomber bottles, so it takes quite a lot of apricots to make just a little bit of Eau de Vie.”

Apricot Eau de Vie was inspired by a European tradition.

“Often times in Europe, fruit is harvested throughout the summer and then the surplus is distilled into this sort of fruit brandy that they call Eau de Vie,” Shoemaker explained. “It is just this really lovely, delicate expression of the fruit. Here in Santa Fe, we have so many apricot trees I felt that it was a great opportunity for us to follow suit and find a way to use all that fruit that falls on the ground.”

To create the brandy, Shoemaker fermented the apricots and then distilled them.

“It does not have any sugar in there,” she said. “It’s a really interesting way to taste the apricots. I think it really takes them on a journey through all parts of the tree. It has this lovely dry apricot, almost woody notes to it, and then those sort of melt into more of a fresh fruit sweetness that I think is followed up by a really nice little floral signature finish.”

This year, instead of picking apricots, the distillery is asking the community to come in and donate their apricots in exchange for a tasting room gift card. The distillery is currently accepting apricot donations so it can begin fermentation of the batch that will be released next summer.

“They can taste our cocktails and see what we’re about,” Shoemaker said. “And we can use the apricots that they may not have had a use for in delicious spirits. It’s a fun way for us to meet the neighbors.”

As Above So Below, formerly Altar Spirits, focuses on plant-forward products. Its offerings include Sigil gin, Ritual vodka, and Aradia aperitivo liqueur. The distillery, founded by Shoemaker and her husband Jeff Gust, combines time-honored distilling methods with fresh innovative approaches to create its line of spirits. More information about the distillery can be found at aasbdistillery.com.