Anchor Brewing might be gone, but the tradition of Anchor Distilling lives on

“I feel very sad, because I’m actually an old beer guy,” says Dan Leese, president and chief executive officer of San Francisco’s Hotaling & Co. “I started with Stroh’s brewery up in Detroit, back in 1981. I was sort of a beer industry junkie, a novice historian, and I always loved Anchor. So, I felt bad, but not nearly as bad as the people who came over from there. Yesterday there was a lot of chatter here about Anchor Brewing and what working there was like.”

By now, we all know that Anchor Brewing ceased production last week. It’s in the news everywhere from CNN to the New York Times — 127 years of tradition gone. The narrative is that the company began in 1896, was purchased in bankruptcy in 1965 by Fritz Maytag (the washing machine family scion), turned into the first “craft brewery” and then sold first in 2014, before being acquired by Sapporo in 2019.

But that isn’t the whole story, because Anchor was actually two companies: Anchor Brewing and Anchor Distilling. Anchor Brewing might have been the first “craft brewery,” but Anchor Distilling was the first “craft distillery” in the Bay Area, beginning operations in 1993. In 2019, when the brewery was turned over to Sapporo, Anchor Distilling was spun off (merging with Preiss Imports) and renamed Hotaling & Co.

“When the Griffin Group (Tony Foglio and that group) decided to sell Anchor Brewing to Sapporo they wanted to keep Anchor Distilling,” Leese says.

Renamed Hotaling & Co. after the famous San Francisco distilling family (for which Hotaling Place in San Francisco also gets its name, as does the ruin of the Hotaling Mansion in San Anselmo’s Sleepy Hollow neighborhood), they continue to produce the award-winning Old Potrero Single Malt whiskey and Junipero gin in San Francisco.

“Most in the industry would consider Bruce Joseph as the first master distiller of craft, and, of course, Bruce is still with us,” Leese says. “He is still our distiller.”

Joseph was recently awarded a Distinguished Service Award by DISCUS (the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States) at their annual gathering in Chicago. And Hotaling itself (as DISCUS’ smallest board member) was instrumental in getting the Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) to finally codify the specific definition for American single malt whiskey just last July. Before, the definition for single malt American whiskey had been loosely defined, causing some confusion in the industry.

“Bruce was originally a brewer over there, and when Fritz wanted to start distilling and making craft spirits, Bruce moved over to be that master distiller,” Leese says.

Leese, a long-time alcohol industry veteran (and native Iowan, just like Fritz Maytag), says that in hindsight the writing was already on the wall for Anchor Brewing.

“When they pulled back to just California distribution, I thought business-wise that probably made sense, but it was just the precursor to shutting it down,” Leese says. “The signs were all there.”

Unionization for Anchor Brewing employees (the first ever for a “craft brewery”), declining sales and a pandemic all contributed to Sapporo pulling the plug on Anchor Brewing. There have been two things overlooked in most of the recent news coverage. One: Sapporo still owns the Anchor Brewing name and logo, as well as several large breweries throughout the U.S. and Canada. It could easily start up production somewhere else. Two: The closing of the brewery coincides almost directly with the end of that union contract, one which Sapporo had refused to renegotiate.