(somber guitar music) ♪ Go to sleep ♪ ♪ Go to sleep ♪ ♪ Go to sleep, you little baby ♪ ♪ When you wake, get some cake ♪ ♪ Ride the pretty little horses ♪ - If you had asked me 20 years ago when our son was just a little baby if we would be doing this, this was nowhere on our radar.

- So this is our vodka.

It starts as Northern California wine.

- We find ways to, again, like we use the wine and repurpose it.

We are not one of the big boys, it goes without saying.

We are relatively small on volume, but because of that, we get to experiment with really unique ingredients.

- It should be obvious that agriculture is extremely important to distillers and craft distillers in particular.

But a lot of people don't think about where their spirits come from.

- There's actually a block just catty corner to this one that's owned by a local family that was planted in the 1800s, and it's still going.

- Everything he's doing about it, like it's with good intentions, you know?

First of all, he's paying double with a minimum wage.

- We've decided to kind of go out on this lemon, and start direct marketing to people, and see if we can bring a different value to someone that's not just a commoditized item.

- Agriculture really starts everything.

It is very much a small town.

We are obviously in a more rural area.

I feel like that automatically binds people together.

- If our farmers are not able to grow enough grain, that means the price goes up, just simple supply and demand.

- And you go to a tree and you grab an orange and you cut it open.

You hand it to one of these people, and they just give you this look after they eat it, like how come I've never had this before?

- It's extremely important that we have healthy farmers and healthy farms and crops.

- Farming, agriculture, and distilled spirits.

You can't have one without, well, you could have farming without the other, but it wouldn't be nearly as fun.

- [Announcer] Production funding for American Grown: My Job Depends on Ag provided by James G. Parker Insurance Associates, insuring and protecting agribusiness for over 40 years.

By Gar Bennett, the Central Valley's growing experts.

More yield, less water, proven results.

We help growers feed the world.

By Brandt Professional Agriculture, proudly discovering, manufacturing, and supplying the ag inputs that support the heroes who work hard to feed a hungry world every day.

By Unwired Broadband.

Today's internet for rural central California.

Keeping valley agriculture connected since 2003.

By Hodges Electric, proudly serving the Central Valley since 1979.

By Pickett Solar, helping farmers and ranchers save money by becoming energy independent.

By Harrison Co., providing family farms with the insights they need to make the best possible strategic M and A and financial decisions.

And by Valley Air Conditioning and Repair, family owned for over 50 years.

Proudly featuring Coleman products.

Dedicated to supporting agriculture and the families that grow food for a nation.

(laid back guitar music) - My name's Nate Randall.

My wife, Bonnie, and I own Hinterhaus Distilling.

We're up here in Arnold, California, and we distill small batch spirits.

- We do everything here, so we're pretty proud of what we've been able to accomplish.

We've only been open to the public for a year and a half now, so we're 2020 founded, and we're really looking forward to what the future holds for us.

I come from the wine industry.

I've also done a really fair amount of communications and marketing, but really primarily I was in the California wine industry, in the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA for many years.

And then I spent a couple of years here in Murphys, California in the Calaveras AVA.

So interestingly, I have a background in, not, I wouldn't go so far as to call it viticulture, but I was really participating pretty considerably at one of the wineries I worked at with regards to taking samples of the fruits when it came in and picking, so I kind of have a background in that, but certainly my biggest thing I think is the front of house.

So with Nate, my husband, he really heads up production and he is our head distiller, and it's my job, I always view it as, to put what he does into layman's terms for our patrons and our guests that come and visit us at Hinterhaus.

- So we're relatively new to California.

We spent most of our lives together in Seattle.

I'm originally from Alaska and Bonnie's from New Jersey.

We had our son in Seattle about 22 years ago almost, and moved all over, and we ended up in the Bay Area for work.

We found Arnold because of Big Trees State Park and all the amazing things to do up here, and we fell in love with it, so we started coming here on vacations and just enjoying the area.

And then when our son went off to college, we decided we wanted a little bit of a new adventure in life, and that's when I left sort of the corporate world and ended up here in Arnold.

We stayed here for several years before we decided what we were going to do with the rest of our lives, and distilling and distilled spirits sort of, I caught the bug of it and fell down a rabbit hole.

And now we own a distillery in Arnold.

'Cause that's one mash is one pallet.

- And then there's a door on this side or whatever.

- Right, there's probably a door on each side, but yeah.

- Yep.

- That way we don't have to bring the grain inside.

- Yep.

- I never thought if you had asked me 20 years ago when our son was just a little baby if we would be doing this, this was nowhere on our radar, but over, you know, 20 years, and you know, kind of a lifetime of exploring different career opportunities for myself and my husband, Nate, and then watching our son grow up, this all kind of fell into place together.

And owning and operating a family business, I would say it's not for everyone.

It's not for every family, but we are a fairly close knit family, and it just seemed like we were all kind of aligned, if you will, at the same time.

That definitely makes it fun.

I mean, we all have our roles to play here at Hinterhaus, and we bring individually our strengths, and so to see that in action together, completely rewarding.

(gentle music) - This orchard was planted in 1912.

- [Interviewer] 1912.

- 1912, same year the Titanic sank.

- [Interviewer] What kinds of trees are these?

- This is a Washington navel.

That's pretty much what they were planting here back then.

There's actually a block just catty corner to this one that's owned by a local family that was planting it in the 1800s, and it's still going.

The business model for citrus basically works.

We grow the fruit on the ranches.

We contract with with a packing house, a packer, and the packer will pick and pack and market that fruit for us, and then basically as long as there's some profit to be made on the other side, we get to take after all the expenses are out, we get our cut back.

Everyone else in the chain gets paid before we get final payment on a crop that goes through that process.

That system has worked fairly well for us for over 70 years.

And I think it has the potential to continue working for us, and other growers.

Where my, I'm not sure if I should call it a fear or not, but where my fear comes in looking into the future, there's a lot coming our way from a regulatory side and particularly as it relates to water.

There's a lot of uncertainty.

This really hit with me a few years ago.

I was at World Ag Expo, or around here what we of the Farm Show in Tulare, and someone from the Farm Bureau asked me to take a group of people from the Midwest out to the ranches.

They'd never seen a citrus operation and they wanted to see.

And so I took a group of, I don't know, maybe 10 people from different areas, and you go to a tree, and you grab an orange, and you cut it open.

You hand it to one of these people, and they just give you this look after they eat it, like how come I've never had this before?

And how do I get more?

Watching the reaction of people when they get a high quality piece of fruit straight off of a tree when they're not used to having that experience is really, that was the catalyst for me saying, "Well how do, is there a way that we can kind of "bring this experience to someone's front door "who hasn't had it before, "in as close as we can to them "being here at the ranch with me?"

And I think, you know, I thought some of this through, and really the way the logistics work on it in most cases is we're getting this product to someone's front door in 48 hours.

(gentle music) (flowing music) - It started with a trip to Berlin, where my brother and his wife and child live, and we found a spirit there that I'd never heard of called Kreitzer Liquor, and I got obsessed with learning how to make that liquor.

It's got a bunch of herbs and botanicals in it.

It's a really fun thing, and it just kind of went from there.

I started studying books, watching as many things as I could, really diving into the science and process, and then I talked a distiller called Dry Diggings in El Dorado Hills into letting me come and do whatever they needed, sweep the floors, clean things, and sort of learn the craft from a good friend of ours.

And it kind of went from there.

- If we go back to early Americana, or certainly if you go back centuries to Europe and around the world, where distilled spirits were really the number one beverage of choice.

I mean during the Revolutionary War history in America, in the colonies, more people were drinking whiskey and distilled spirits than even water in some parts of the country.

Now they weren't doing this because it was a luxury good at the time.

They were doing it because they were farmers, and so they had maybe abundant crops, crops that were are going to go bad, and they said, "How can we kind of commoditize it "just for our family on a very individual level?

"How can we kind of take these crops that otherwise "we don't have a use for, "or we have a bumper crop this year, "and we can turn it into something that not only we enjoy, "but has a value to our neighbors, "so that we can do some important trading."

So I always kind of revisit that history, because today and certainly the history of the last 40 or 50 years in the alcohol beverage industry has been wine heavy, and I love wine, and then obviously with the advent of craft beer, that's really come on strong in the last couple of decades.

But if we go back before this, it was really distilled spirits, and particularly grain spirits, so whiskeys, that were in everyone's home, and they were farming those grains and distilling what they had.

- It's not like beer or wine, where you can practice at home and you can kind of take steps from there.

You really have to have somebody who's willing to let you come into their facility and teach you what they know.

We're fortunate in that there's not many craft distillers in this country, much less California, and so it's a really close community.

It's not competitive at all, and people are really open and willing to share.

Yeah, so as we heat up, the vapor's going to travel through these, they're called plates in the column here, and then they're going to travel over this back pipe and divert down and come back up here.

So as it's coming up, you can start to see some activity in there.

You can see the vapor rising, but it's definitely reached here, but here we don't have much going on.

You can see the moment when it comes, because this condensation will start to build.

And then eventually it'll go poof, and it'll become clear like liquid, and then you'll have more activity, and it'll travel up and do that through the whole thing.

Then the vapors will travel over, and reach the condenser here, which has cold water running through it.

And when those hot vapors hit the cold water, it'll recondense into liquid, and come out the other end as alcohol.

(gentle music) So everything starts as a fermentable product.

So you start with something that has sugar or you create sugar in that product.

So in our case, we work with a lot of grapes.

The grapes are fermented into wine.

And then the wine is distilled, in our case, into vodka, gin, and liquors.

So the basic premise is you're making a fermentable product which has a low alcohol volume, such as wine or a beer-like product, and then you distill that by separating the alcohol from the rest of the product.

So you're taking a, let's say 13%, wine and you're distilling it up to a, let's say, vodka level.

You know, 80 proof or 40% alcohol.

In vodka's case, it's going to be distilled to 190 proof in order to become vodka, which is almost pure alcohol, and then you proof it down for bottling, and there's no resting time in a barrel or anything like that.

It's a clear, somewhat neutral spirit.

I will say that a lot of craft distillers are discovering that vodka doesn't have to be just completely neutral.

It can have character.

So in our case with grapes and wine, it does have some residual character that comes across as sweet, almost like cotton candy notes, but it's still vodka.

- We're going to talk about kind of the unique qualities of our vodka.

Primarily it is distilled from wine, so we take finished wine and we partner up with local vintners to get wine that they don't really have a use for.

They don't intend to bottle it, and we repurpose it.

We kind of give it new life.

So this makes our vodka fairly unique.

There's not a lot of wine distilled vodkas on the market.

Agriculture really starts everything.

So I mentioned that the history of distilled spirits really starts with farmers themselves.

So they were growing and distilling grain to glass.

They were just distilling whatever it was that they had to distill.

Today, we're really fortunate to live in this modern age where we can actually reach out to farmers as distillers and say "What are you growing?

"What's unique about your crop?

"What's unique about how you grow it, "and how might that influence our final product "if it's, say, a whiskey product or a vodka product?"

So for us, the two go hand in hand, farming, agriculture, and distilled spirits.

You can't have one without, well, you could have farming without the other, but it wouldn't be nearly as fun.

(Bonnie laughs) (gentle music) (reflective music) - [Interviewer] You've been a part of working with Eric on his normal, large scale production.

- Yeah.

- [Interviewer] But also what do you like about this newer kind of small scale thing he's doing?

- I mean, well, I just like how he's, everything he's doing about it.

Like it's with good intentions, you know?

- [Interviewer] Yeah.

- He's, first of all, he's paying double the minimum wage, so that's a big plus for whoever he brings.

He decided to choose me out of his other FLCs that he has.

- [Interviewer] It must be because you're a pretty cool guy.

- I mean, you know.

(Interviewer laughs) - [Interviewer] You think so.

- I'll go with it, you know?

I'll go with it.

- As we move forward as a farmer, I feel like we're kind of in this weird space where as efficiency increases, you lose contact with the people.

So we as farmers are kind of shrinking back into the woodwork, so to speak, and really not having that connection with people.

And that seems to be what a lot of people are asking for is who grows their food?

Were the people that were involved in the production of that food outside of the owner or the farmer, were they treated fairly and properly.

And, you know, as a society, I think in a lot of respects, we value you giving back when you've been blessed.

My family's definitely been blessed.

And so we took all of those ideas and packaged it together in a way that hopefully brings someone an experience and a value that they really haven't been able to access before.

This is a little piece of the story of where this fruit came from, from our legacy block planted in 1912, 110 years old.

- [Interviewer] Now, do you do this?

Oh, this is cool.

So you do it.

You cross out customer, and you know that Toni ordered this.

- [Eric] Right.

- [Interviewer] And then Toni gets a personalized thank you note from the grower.

- [Eric] Well, actually in this case from the grower's wife.

(both laugh) I'm not always sure that people get paid at the same value that they bring to the table, so it's one of the things that I'm trying to, at a minimum, bring awareness to people that there is a lot of value in what farm workers do, and it's hard work, and we look at it like it's not skilled labor, and that's just far from the truth.

And from my perspective, if there's a way by building out this system that we can help, because the main reason I feel that way is because I live here.

You know, and I grew up here.

You know, I went to school with these folks, and you kind of look around and see, and this is my personal belief is that there's not always, that value doesn't always come back to them.

(somber music) - We can store a lot more vertical, yeah.

Because if the ceilings are 16 feet tall, I mean, man, you can have a big narrow one.

You know what I mean?

So it's been an interesting journey being in this industry and being so close to agriculture and farms.

It really is sort of an awakening of how close we are to it, and what the impacts are of the things we do.

So from growing amazing grains that do have an impact on flavor, to the way we treat them, to even at the end of the day those spent grains that have been used going back to farms to feed cows that are then used for whatever purposes, it's all sort of a big circle of life.

And if we do it right, it's very impactful, and the fun part of it is is the flavor of these products is actually superior, if you treat things well.

- You have to have fun.

I think that, your enthusiasm for what you're doing, whatever it is you're doing, comes across, and in a business like ours, when we are selling a product, you better be having fun doing it, and we certainly are, and we hope that our patrons see that.

- Agriculture and working with farms, water is extremely important to us.

We use a lot of water in our processes, and we try to limit that, but the quality of the water is important to us.

And so all of things are kind of intertwined, and it's nice to see that people are starting to recognize that their whiskey and their other spirits do come from a farm, and that's where it all originates from.

- So our crews will go out early in the morning.

We're shipping every Saturday for now.

And they'll go out early in the morning and start picking fruit.

Depending on how many orders we have in that week depends on how much they pick.

And then that fruit's transported to the shop, and we run it through our pack line, which, you know, cleans, polishes, and then they help me grade it, and then it goes into a box.

And anything that doesn't make the grade to go into this, which, you know, in our marketing, we talk about at least a one for one basis that oranges are going to a local homeless shelter.

What we found is, you know, because our quality standards are fairly high, we're, it's more than that, which is okay with me.

I think at this point, counting today, which are our last day of shipping, I would estimate that we're pushing somewhere around 17,000 pounds that we've donate, been able to donate to the Visalia Rescue Mission, and which is such a cool thing.

Yeah, you know, I'll pull up there with a load of oranges and the people come out of the buildings and they say, "Hey, the orange guy's here," and they come running out, you know, and just talking to these folks and being like, they're like, "Wow, you know, these are great.

"We don't get stuff like this.

"This is such a treat for us," and it just makes me feel good.

And so we built that into it, and, you know, it's, this has been just a very cool thing for me to do and for us to do, and it's at its moments.

This hasn't always been easy (Eric chuckles) and it's definitely I'm on a learning curve.

We're all on a learning curve.

And, but I'm not stopping.

We're going to keep, we're going to keep chipping away at this and see if we can turn it into something.

(relaxed music) - Production funding for American Grown: My Job Depends on Ag provided by James G. Parker Insurance Associates, insuring and protecting agribusiness for over 40 years.

By Gar Bennett, the Central Valley's growing experts.

More yield, less water, proven results.

We help growers feed the world.

By Brandt Professional Agriculture, proudly discovering, manufacturing, and supplying the ag inputs that support the heroes who work hard to feed a hungry world every day.

By Unwired Broadband, today's internet for rural central California.

Keeping valley agriculture connected since 2003.

By Hodges Electric, proudly serving the Central Valley since 1979.

By Pickett Solar, helping farmers and ranchers save money by becoming energy independent.

By Harrison Co., providing family farms with the insights they need to make the best possible strategic M and A and financial decisions.

And by Valley Air Conditioning and Repair, family owned for over 50 years, proudly featuring Coleman products.

Dedicated to supporting agriculture and the families that grow food for a nation.