The one-hour version of our production tour covers the highlights: the grain room, the fermenters, the still, the bottling line, the tasting room. This is the longer version — what actually happens in each step, why we do it the way we do, and where the choices that matter get made. If you're going to book a tour, read this first and you'll ask better questions.
1. Ingredient selection
Everything starts with what we buy. Every spirit we make begins with a raw ingredient chosen for a specific flavor outcome:
- Oasis Vodka: Fresh Medjool dates from the Coachella Valley, sourced from growers we work with directly. See our full Coachella Valley piece for why California dates are the world's best.
- Nopalera Gin: Juniper (imported), prickly pear (California), and a bill of California citrus — lemon, grapefruit, and finger lime peels sourced from Central Valley growers.
- Zanja-Madre Bourbon: Corn from a Midwestern grower, rye from the Pacific Northwest, malted barley. Mash bill: 60% corn, 35% rye, 5% malted barley.
- Zanja-Madre Rye: 95% rye, 5% malted barley. A true rye, not a high-rye bourbon in disguise.
2. Mashing
The next step converts the starches or fruit sugars into a fermentable liquid.
For the whiskeys, this means cooking the grain with hot water in a mash tun. The heat gelatinizes the starches; the malted barley provides enzymes that break the starches down into simple sugars. The result is a warm, sweet, oatmeal-like mash.
For Oasis Vodka, the process is simpler because dates are already sugar-rich. We warm-water-mash the dates, which releases the sugars and gets us to a fermentable liquid in a few hours.
For Nopalera Gin, the mash step is skipped — we distill a neutral spirit from grain first, then redistill it with the botanicals in the still.
3. Fermentation
The mash is transferred to one of our two 1,875-gallon stainless-steel fermenters. We pitch a proprietary yeast strain, seal the tank, and let fermentation run for 3–5 days depending on the spirit and the ambient temperature.
Fermentation is where a lot of the flavor character develops. The yeast produces alcohol as a byproduct, but it also produces esters and congeners — the fruity, spicy, sometimes-funky notes that distinguish craft-fermented spirit from industrial-fermented spirit. We ferment slower than commercial operations to preserve those notes.
4. Distillation
The set piece of the tour. Our 1,000-gallon Vendome copper pot still — imported from Louisville, Kentucky — is a batch still, not a continuous column. Every distillation is a discrete event: fill the pot with fermented mash, apply heat, capture the vapor as it rises through the still and condenses in the copper worm.
The choice of a pot still matters. Column stills produce cleaner, more neutral spirit; pot stills preserve congeners and produce more distinctive flavor. Nearly every craft distillery uses a pot still for that reason.
The most important part of the distillation is the cut — the decision about which fractions of the distillate to keep. The first vapors off the still are volatile and undrinkable (the "heads"). The last vapors are heavy and bitter (the "tails"). The middle cut — the "heart" — is the finished spirit. The narrower the heart cut, the cleaner the spirit; the wider the cut, the more character (and more risk). Every distiller has their own preferences.
5. Resting, aging, and bottling
Oasis and Nopalera are unaged — they rest briefly to allow the spirit to integrate, then get bottled.
The Zanja-Madre whiskeys spend 3–5 years in new charred American oak barrels, char level #3. California's hot summers and cool winters push the whiskey deeper into the barrel and pull it back out — a more aggressive aging cycle than Kentucky's, which produces mature whiskey faster.
Bottling is by hand. Every bottle is labeled, capped, wax-sealed, and inspected on-site. You can watch this on the tour.
See it happen
The best way to understand any of this is to stand next to the equipment while it's happening. Distillations typically run Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Book a tour for one of those slots.