The spirit moves him: Germain-Robin writes a new book on the art of distilling

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Ukiah Daily Journal

Hubert Germain-Robin’s name is on one of the most respected brandies in the world.

But his view of that world has led him down the road to another small batch of something fine and tasty, created with passion, and then another and another.

Germain-Robin no longer works for the company he helped start and which still sells the brandy he created. Six years ago he turned instead to helping others whose fire to create great small-batch spirits intrigues him.

As a consultant, he will go anywhere to help anyone he feels has the same passion he does for the distilling process.

And now he has written a book, “Traditional Distillation, Art Passion,” which is a primer for those who want to begin learning this basic yet complex art.

Sitting in his dining room in his Redwood Valley home in the hills overlooking Lake Mendocino, Germain-Robin has the air of a great teacher who is always looking for the next brilliant student. His own senses will tell him when a project is the right one.

He gets requests from all over the world for help creating new distilled products. He will advise on equipment – which he notes is far more readily available these days than when he began – and his clients will send him samples of their creations for him to taste and evaluate.

He has worked on rums, whiskeys, tequilas, you name it. It’s all about the distillation, the aging, and the importance of hand made artisan processes about which he is an expert.

There’s something intangible about the making of a great liquor or liqueur. You can’t do it by the numbers, he said, so much of this, so much of that. Each batch will bring challenges and demand decisions and experimentation.

“You can adapt the traditional distillation to any type of liqueur,” he explained. What he loves about his work now is interacting with people who are as excited as he was in 1981 when he arrived in Ukiah and began small batch artisan brandy-making.

“There are a lot of open minded people” doing this, he said. It reminds him, he added, of the start of the microbrewing phenomenon in the early 1980s.

His book, he says, provides a first and basic lesson in distillation.

“I learned myself on the job. I am not a chemist at all,” he said. “A person who is just starting can open the book and start distilling.”

Born into a French family of generations of cognac makers, Germain-Robin learned his trade “backwards,” as he puts it in the book.

“I started working with aged spirits, then (went backwards) to learn about distillation, and finally about vinification and viticulture,” he writes.

His book includes chapters on “The Alambic Pot Still,” “Defects Their Origins,” “Cleaning the Still,” “Tasting,” and “General Advice.” It also contains wonderful illustrations, some of them labels from his family’s cognacs, but also detailed drawings of a pot still and step by step instructions on how to use one.

The overall message of the book, however, is that distilling is an adventure.

“I try to address the spirit of making spirits,” he said.

The book is the first in a series of books Germain-Robin intends to write on producing “eau de vie” or the water of life.

These days he chooses his projects based on his feeling about the distiller who comes to him. He looks for “people with commitment, and a sense of vision. Someone open minded, who is willing to change the approach to do what’s needed. Their passion puts a spark in me.”

Germain-Robin is looking to create quality, not mass production.

He doesn’t travel much, maybe one or two months a year, and he doesn’t drink much, a glass of wine a day perhaps. But he does dream of creating some interesting new spirits in Asia, where the fruit is bountiful and he could try his small batch artisan distillation on mangoes, or coconuts, not to mention cherries, apricots and other stone fruits. He is drawn to Cambodia, with its “rich culture,” where change is happening fast and the people are rebuilding and have great potential for drawing “tourisme.”

In the meantime, Germain-Robin likes it right where he is here in Mendocino County where he was welcomed and supported 30 years ago while hitchhiking on Highway 101.

“People are low key. They help each other,” he said.

Germain-Robin’s book can be found at Mendocino Book Company on School Street in Ukiah, or at hubertgermain-robin.com or distilling.com.