San Juan Island Distillery — Attraction in San Juan Island

This was one of the highlights of our honeymoon! My wife and I love spirit tastings and we were disappointed to see that San Juan distillery wouldn't be open during our stay. We sent the owners an email and they were kind enough to open up Thursday evening so we could do a tasting! They had an amazing presentation and were incredibly informative about every aspect of their process! We asked a ton of questions and they seemed to enjoy answering! Being just out of college we are often brushed off at wine or spirit tasteings, and so it was imensly refreshing to be treated with respect. Their product was absolutely delishious, and we bought their blackberry brandy, harvest select gin, ginger bitters, and red sky at night mix! It was the perfect ending to our honeymoon, and we have loved having the taste of the San juans...

I was surprised to see how highly related this place was. We were MUCH less than unimpressed. They only distill gin and brandy, and offer some combinations or variations of each. But we should have had enough sense to return to the car when our guide struggled through her presentation. I'd be shocked if she was legal drinking age, and multiple times when she had talked herself into a corner with her lack of knowledge of the product, her go-to solution was to say "so...yeah". I'm still struggling with the math she gave us with the apple brandy that it was four years old when it won a medal (2015?), which would make it six-and-a-half now. We braved the free tasting, but were not impressed with anything, although the apple brandy was better...

We decided to hunt down the distillery for a bottle of gin we had tried at Friday Harbor House. Unfortunately, they were closed but after contacting them, they had us come over for a tasting. We expected just to pick up a bottle and be on our way turned into one of our favorite hours of our trip to SJI.

Hawk pulled out multiple gins, brandies, vermouths, and liqueurs. He spent so much time telling us how they distilled their spirits and plenty of stories about their distillery. His passion was infectious! If you're a fan of gins or brandies, stopping by the San Juan Island...