CRAFTVOL.

The 30,000 MeadowFruit trees do not bear approximately the same amount of fruit every year. This is known as alternance in fast-growing trees. This is actually an ingenious strategy of nature: in order to preserve and spread one's own species, it is important that the seeds are distributed as widely as possible. The distributors are the animals that eat the fruit. Producing fruit requires a great deal of energy. Strategically, it therefore makes sense not to bear the same amount of fruit every year, but to invest the energy in reserves. In this way, the trees not only create their own resilience, but also energy reserves for the strong fruiting years. The soil microbiome acts as a battery that can provide energy when it is recharged in the intervening years. 

This is why we utilise the potential of our MeadowFruit for distillation, especially in strong fruit years. After careful fermentation and double distillation, we obtain an impressive 5 litres of pure distillate from 100 kg of cherries. Just 3 litres are obtained from 100 kg of the supposedly sweet Stuttgarter Gaishirtle, because pears in particular contain a high proportion of sorbitol, a form of non-fermentable sugar. The flavours are most concentrated in blackcurrant: we only get 2 litres of pure alcohol because we don't ferment the fruit but, as is proper, ferment it and distil it in the final fermentation.

We distil each distillate not just once, but twice. In the first distillation, the aim is to fix all of the flavours in the alcohol at the optimum time, close to the end of fermentation. This has to happen quickly in autumn. The second distillation, on the other hand, takes time. The fine distillery is busy almost all year round: The rough spirit with around 30 % vol. is gently heated in the copper still, the individual flavour fractions are separated over a period of 6 to 9 hours and the heart of the spirit can be worked out cleanly. Precision is extremely important here, because the longer the brandy is stored, the more obvious any errors in the distillation process become. All our brandies are stored for years and mature partly in wood, in glass or, at the very end, in stainless steel barrels, before the alcohol content is gradually adjusted to 40 % vol. by adding spring water over several months. 

CRAFTVOL. stands for perfect craftsmanship and comprises our range of the most popular and favourite distillates.