Bar Agricole is the San Francisco bar from spirits pro and author Thad Vogler. It’s prized for its cocktails, but the bar is now giving its name to a new portfolio of single origin spirits focused on transparent and direct sourcing, heritage distillation practices, and the provenance and quality of ingredients.
Much like third wave coffee (Blue Bottle Coffee founder James Freeman is a Bar Agricole advisor), single origin spirits connect consumers with the places where they are grown and made. The Bar Agricole spirits are all sourced directly from small producers and offered in their purest form, without relying on colorants and additives. This allows their agricultural beginnings, fermentation, and distillation to shine.
Collaborators include Alameda, California-based St. George, one of America’s original craft distilleries; Leopold Bros., a family-owned distillery in Denver renowned for site-specific ingredients, floor maltings, and hand-bottled whiskeys; Marian Farms, an outfit making brandy and liqueur on a biodynamic farm and distillery in Fresno, California; Calvados Adrien Camut, the most renowned producer from the Pays d’Auge region in France; and Real Minero, a traditional palenque (mezcal distillery) in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Considering that Bar Agricole’s spirits line is brand new, the lineup is extensive. It includes the following bottles, sold via the website in 750 mL and 50 mL sizes.
Golden Alpine Amaro
Sweetened with only honey and free of all colorants, extracts, essences, industrial alcohols, and sugars, this amaro is exquisitely bitter. It’s made from fresh herbs in collaboration with the house of Bodiga, who has been producing amari since the 19th century.
Vermouth #1
Made with organic nebbiolo wine and enhanced with real cane sugar (rather than industrial sweeteners and caramel coloring), this vermouth is bottled by Bordiga, features more than 30 different macerations—as opposed to extracts or essences—and celebrates Italy’s aperitivo culture.
Lalocura, Pechuga Single Run Mezcal, Bar Agricole Celebration
This collaboration with Eduardo “Lalo” Javier Angeles Carreño (who is a staunch conservator of the tradition of agave distillates as well as of the agave plant) and the team at Lalocura was made special for Bar Agricole to celebrate the bar’s reopening.
Biodynamic California Brandy
The only Demeter-certified biodynamic brandy in the United States, this brandy is fermented and distilled in a German copper still, and aged on the Marian Farms premises by Gena Nonini, whose family has farmed there for generations.
Demeter Certified Curaçao
This curaçao was developed with Gena Nonini of Marian Farms and dcontains only three ingredients, all of them biodynamically farmed: California orange peels, sugar, and grape spirit.
Bar Agricole Gin by St. George
This gin is specially made for Bar Agricole by St. George with notes of citrus and eucalyptus to reflect the Bay Area’s aromatics and California landscapes.
St. George Single Cask Rum
This rum is built from five separate harvests of sugar cane, conducted in December of 2013 and January of 2014, from Kalin Farms in Brawley, California. Fermented separately, each was distilled in separate batches. The five rums were then blended together and rested in a recouped Francois Frères barrel beginning in March 2014.
St. George Single Cask Apple Brandy
This unique apple brandy began as a cider made from a field blend of apples grown by Gowan Orchards in Philo, California. The cider was then distilled with 8,000 pounds of fresh, unfermented Red Delicious apples, also grown by Gowan Orchards. It has been aged since March 27, 2015 in a 59-gallon French oak barrel that previously held a different cider.
