Still waters: Altar Spirits anchors in

Mar. 4—You might think that whiskey makes up the largest percentage of spirit sales by volume in the United States, but that honor actually belongs to vodka. In February 2020, Forbes reported that vodka, at 31 percent of sales by volume, was the spirits sector's reigning champion. So it's no surprise that Santa Fe newest distillery, Altar Spirits, would roll out its Ritual Vodka last fall as the first of its new line of spirits.

But vodka's popularity with consumers is only one side of the equation that prompted master distiller and Altar Spirits owner Caley Shoemaker to introduce it in the distillery.

"Vodka, as a first spirit, makes a lot of sense for us for the fact that it doesn't require years and years aging in a barrel," says the former head distiller at California's Hangar 1, which is known for their award-winning vodkas. "I can distill it in a day or two, cut it to proof, and be ready to go."

Shoemaker developed Altar Spirits, which opened in late December, with innovation in mind. Previously, she worked for a Colorado-based company that only made whiskey and then was making vodkas and brandies in California, which provided more opportunities to try new recipes.

"There's a lot of things I wanted to make over the years," she says. "But working for a really large company like Hangar 1, you can't just go, 'Hey, we want to release this.' You have to talk to somebody in an office and get approvals and all this other stuff."

It was only a matter of time before starting a distillery became the most practical avenue for creating her own artisan spirits.

Altar Spirits (545 Camino de la Familia, 505-916-8596, altarspirits.com) has a spacious, comfortable tasting room that's open from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays, offering seasonal cocktails and gift items for sale. Shoemaker offers tours of the distillery, which is located on the site of the former Santa Fe Clay. The tours include a tasting and a behind-the-scenes look at the production facilities, including the state-of-the-art still that — with its bulbous copper-topped boilers and vapor assembly — looks like a steampunk apparatus straight out of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A large window behind the bar in the cocktail lounge allows guests to view the distilling process in action. The whole operation occupies a 10,000-square-foot space.

"The still was custom built, designed for our operation by a company out of British Columbia that I've worked with before," says Shoemaker, who co-founded the operation with her husband, Altar Spirits' Sales Director Jeff Gust. "Our vodka is based off of malted barley that comes from Colorado. Bosque Brewing brings it in for us and mashes it and turns it into a fermented wash that we can distill here."

Part of the allure of starting her own distillery was the opportunity for community engagement. Shoemaker and Gust wanted to invest their products with a sense of place, relying on locally and regionally sourced ingredients.

"That's absolutely our goal," she says. "I started my career in Denver, working with Rocky Mountain malted barley and then spent a lot of time in California, sourcing things from the farmers market. It's super fun to be able to collaborate with community members that way."

And the newest addition to their spirits lineup, Sigil Gin, which premiered in February, is no exception.

"We're using piñon, sage, juniper, all the things that grow here in New Mexico, to really try to create that sense of New Mexico in a bottle," she says of the gin. "We have American single-malt whiskey coming up. We've actually been distilling it for a while. We're just waiting for our first barrel delivery. There's a little bit of a barrel shortage in the U.S. right now."

Altar Spirits also has a digestif in the works, a bitter amaro, and they plan a series of small batch liqueurs.

"I'd love to distill the apricots that we get bumper crops of every summer and make an apricot brandy, which is really lovely. Next time we have one of those big crops, I think we're going to be driving around with a delivery pick-up truck, just loading the back of it as much as we can from people's houses."

Shoemaker and Gust moved to Santa Fe a little over two years ago. She'd been a frequent visitor since her days in art school at the University of Denver. But for much of that time, there were no distilleries in Santa Fe where she could work. This was before Santa Fe Spirits and Tumbleroot Brewery and Distillery were founded. Now, Altar Spirits, as Santa Fe's third distillery, joins what's still a very small club.

"As we started looking here, there weren't any distilleries where you could sit and have a cocktail and see the process happening at the same time. We wanted to bring that experience here and create a place where it would be easy for locals to come visit, and tourists could also get here really quickly, either by walking or by hotel shuttles, and so the Railyard just made a ton of sense for us."

Pull Quote

Shoemaker and Gust were fortunate to find a location with a loading dock, which is a must for a large-scale operation. What is now the tasting room used to be the area in Santa Fe Clay that housed the former ceramic studio's kilns. But transforming it into a working distillery required adding a lot of safety infrastructure, which included overhauling the fire sprinkler and ventilation systems. A large space isn't always necessary for distilling spirits, as any moonshine maker can attest, but this is the real deal. They needed sufficient space to distill, as well as for bottling, shipping, and storing barrels for aging.

"We were a little worried that, depending on the time of year, we were going to get hit by a lot of tourists and the locals would be like, 'It's too busy.' One of the advantages of opening in the wintertime is we've had this wonderful crescendo of visitors, mostly locals. It's given our team time to anchor into the space before we start getting all the visitors this summer. By then, we'll be ready to rock."

Right now, the tasting room features a cocktail list of about a dozen items, which are all created using spirits from New Mexico distilleries, including 505 Spirits, Vara Winery & Distillery, and, of course, Altar Spirit's own vodka and gin. Outside of spirits from other regional distilleries, all the cocktail ingredients are hand-crafted by the team at Altar Spirits.

They've kept the menu abbreviated for their debut on the scene, but plan to launch an expanded menu in March, which will feature unique recipes, twists on classic cocktails, and non-alcoholic cocktails as well. Altar Spirits was recently approved as a vendor at Total Wine & More, and its products are also available locally at Kelly's Liquors.

"Our plan is to distribute throughout the state, eventually," says Shoemaker, who'd like to see her spirits available at local restaurants and bars.

In the meantime, they book live music for the cocktail lounge on Thursday nights, can host private events, and plan workshops for the coming year, which may include such topics as growing your own herbs and vegetables for use in homemade cocktails.

"We're trying to create opportunities for the community to spend time together and do some really fun stuff in this space as much as possible."