REACHING OUT
Safe House Distilling gets its spirits to retailers across state
Safe House Distilling is making the most of its time aging and developing products for the new year.
Its storefront is temporarily closed due to the current health order, so the distillery is distributing its products throughout the state. It recently teamed up with National Distributing Co. to distribute its spirits to New Mexico retailers, including Albertsons and Smith’s grocery stores. The distillery’s social media platforms will soon offer a map of locations carrying its products. Customers can also message the distillery on social media to set up a time to pick up bottles of their liking at the distillery, at 616 Gold SW. Its social media pages are at facebook.com/ Safe House Distilling or in stag ram. com/ safe house distilling.
“This next year is probably going to be a big push into the retail side of it, since bars have been closed so much for COVID,” said Chris Leurig, distiller at Safe House Distilling. “So we’re just trying to have our spirits available for New Mexicans everywhere in the state instead of mostly just in Albuquerque. So that’s a really big push that we’re doing right now just to make it through all these COVID hassles.”
The selection of Safe House spirits will depend on what each of the retailers request and have room for.
“Our goal is for them to get everything, but obviously, with shelf space they might not have space to buy everything from us at once, so our goal is to try to get it into as many places as possible,” Leurig said. “But no matter what, the normal Teller (vodka) and probably the blueberry lavender (vodka) will be in every place to start, and then adding the gin and the other infusions when they have space and when the stores will allow us to bring it into their store.”
A new apple pie-infused vodka is expected to be released in early March.
“That one has fresh apples that we here processed by hand, and we cut all the cores and seeds out of them, and then we used some organic cinnamon sticks and infused it in cinnamon and then a few other actual spices to make it remind you of apple pie,” Leurig said.
Safe House now offers Teller Genuine Vodka, Teller Green Chile Infused Vodka, Teller Blueberry Lavender Infused Vodka, and Lock Pick High Desert Style Gin. The distillery tripled its gin production over the past six months. It is now doing barrels of gin and will soon offer a barrelrested gin that will most likely be available in the fall. Its current high-desert gin, Lock Pick, contains local and internationally sourced botanicals.
“We use a lot of botanicals and earthy flavors of the high-desert climate that we’re in right now to impart in the gin,” Leurig said. “Right now, it has 14 different botanicals. Some of them are local. Some of them are sourced from around the world, from Spain and France. But with the gin, we’re using that gin as a base to then barrel-age it in a bunch of used bourbon barrels from Buffalo Trace and from other distilleries around the United States.”
The distillery plans to offer whiskey in the near future and later offer blanco, reposado and añejo agave spirits. Santa Fe Brewing Co. gave Safe House its old mash tun which it is using for whiskey production. The distillery is now filling about two barrels a week for aging and hopes to soon increase to four barrels a week to build up an inventory for a whiskey release.