Blueberry. Lemon. Vodka. Enjoy

Aug 12

Creating a new California farm fresh spirit with estate-grown blueberries & lemons

August, 2022

“Flavored” Vodka

*Where the flavors come from real, old-fashioned, FRUIT*

One of the major perks of living on a farm is that you get to taste the harvest at its freshest. There's a vibrancy in freshly picked produce that you just can’t imitate without getting some earth on your hands. We enjoy it so much we thought we would share those bursting fresh flavors with you by capturing that just picked flavor in a new style of small batch spirit. This journey actually began years ago, before the outside world had heard about the Sabbatical Distilling Project. Our home and our birthplace is on Victoria Island Farms, a setting that offers endless inspiration for new and exciting experiments in booze. At the top of our list of estate-grown ingredients to get to work on were our famous island-grown summer blueberries. We’ve infused them, distilled them, extracted, fermented, aged, juiced, frozen and mashed our beloved berries.

After endless experimentation, permutations and consultation with farmers, food scientists and bartenders, we released our first-ever “Harvest Series” product with the debut of the “Farmhouse Tart Blueberry Liqueur” in the summer of 2021 as Sabbatical opened its doors to the public for the first time. It was something different. It was a little out there. It was a liqueur that we actually wanted to drink, characterized by the balancing flavor profiles of blueberry, lemon (from our farmhouse orchard) and thyme. It was a limited release. It was a hit. We loved it, but we didn’t make it again.

We may bring it back in the future, but for our second blueberry harvest season as an operating distillery, we had something new in mind…. We took our learnings from the past and set our sights on perfecting a lighter, more versatile spirit that still represented our farm roots and the beautiful flavor balance of blueberries & lemons. After new rounds of experimentation, consultation, trial and error and a whole lot of picking, prepping, infusing and distilling tons of freshly harvested fruit from our own fields, we hit on our all-new product: a blueberry-lemon flavored vodka. We didn’t always plan to make a vodka, but the notion of a “flavored” vodka that could open the door to using real ingredients that capture true flavor sold us on the idea to create an artisanal style of vodka that could meet our standards of complexity and quality.

We made this flavored vodka with our own blueberries and lemons from the distillery backyard, using a combination of methods including distillation to a clear spirit and infusion of the freshly picked fruit which gives this vodka the color and deeper flavors you see in a bottle. We made this new spirit to capture and preserve that just picked flavor, to be enjoyed well beyond the end of harvest season.

This is a vodka unlike any you’ve had before. Flavor-rich yet airy and smooth, it’s ready for mixing or sipping chilled on those late summer days & nights. Use it as you would any other vodka for a new twist on your old favorites, or use it in place of a gin or a liqueur to see its range. For as long as the hotter days are around, it’s hard to beat the easy prep Blueberry Lemon Vodka Spritzer: combine vodka with sparkling water (lemon flavored is a good place to start), mix and pour over ice, garnish with a fresh mint leaf and a slice of lemon or orange (or whatever you fancy). Sit back and enjoy.