West Marin residents create distillery named after Tomales Bay fence

Conceived in West Marin, the Elk Fence Distillery is named after a Tomales Bay fence built to keep native tule elk from eating non-native crops. It’s about as West Marin as you can get, except for one thing: It’s in Santa Rosa.

When co-founders and co-distillers Gail Coppinger and Scott Woodson originally went to the Marin Civic Center and asked what it would take to open a distillery in Marin County, they were met with blank stares. They made their dreams come true anyway.

The two met working in the trades — Coppinger is a shingler, and Woodson is a painter — and bonded over his love of homebrewing and her love of cooking (she’s a former professional cook). One summer night in 2014, they got together in Woodson’s garage in Inverness.

“We made a mash together,” says Coppinger, of Point Reyes Station. “I loved the smell and the chemistry.”

By that time, Woodson, a former barley grower, had already started to look beyond brewing.

“I started reading about distilling,” he says, “and I realized that you can’t do a distillery in your garage. You’d go to prison. You can make beer and wine in your garage, but you can’t distill.”

The two of them were intrigued.

“We were like newborn babies, we knew nothing,” Coppinger says. “We kind of dove in and put a down payment on a still system.”

They ordered a hybrid double pot still from Trident Stills in Etna, Maine, attended tutorials in Pennsylvania and Kentucky, studied up on distilling and began looking for a place to put it. Marin was out, so they looked first in the East Bay before settling on a building in Santa Rosa.

“We did have a time limit: The equipment was being shipped to us, and we better have a place to keep it,” Coppinger says. “You can’t get a license until you lease a location, that’s the difference between every other business and distillation. You must have a location first, and then you fill out the forms. You can’t do it beforehand.”

The cost for a type four manufacturer of distilled spirits license is a mere $990, whereas an on-premise, full-liquor sales license can run tens of thousands of dollars. But the license is not where the investment lies.

“Getting the building turned out to be the easy part,” Coppinger says. “The Tubbs Fire had just happened, when we were starting our build-out. We had to get our plans signed off by the fire department.”

That took 18 months — and a year and a half of rent on a building they couldn’t use.

“The fire department is serious about what you are producing. You are producing a high-proof distillate, and they want to make sure everyone is safe — as they should,” Coppinger says.

They got their final inspection and opened the doors on March 14, 2020, just as COVID hit.

All of that is in the rear view mirror now. In the intervening years, they began producing four products: a vodka ($35), a 90-proof gin ($50), a barrel-aged gin ($50) and a 2-year-old Briny Deep unfiltered single-malt whiskey ($140), all made from locally sourced barley. Elk Fence is now in 30 different locations throughout California, and they recently placed third in USA Today 10Best’s list of best new craft distilleries.

In a super-saturated field of small-batch spirits, Elk Fence’s products stand out. Their White Elk vodka is 90 proof, 10 proof higher than almost every other vodka on the market. Their Fir Top gin contains only three botanicals — coriander, tangerine and grapefruit peel — besides the requisite juniper. And their whiskey is aged two years, not in the heavily charred barrels typically used for American whiskey, but in lighter toasted barrels used for wine.

“Char seals the barrel, which makes it harder for the spirit to age out,” Woodson says. “It takes out impurities but at the same time, it’s taking a lot of really good flavors out. If you are distilling really well, you don’t want flavor to be taken out by the barrel.”

The result is a deeply full-flavored whiskey that oozes spice and caramel. It certainly isn’t rye, bourbon or wheat. And at that price, it isn’t for the novice either, but then again, great whiskeys seldom are.

“We haven’t paid ourselves a dime yet,” Woodson says. “It’s a labor of love at this point.”

Elk Fence’s tasting room is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays at 464 Kenwood Court in Santa Rosa. Find more information at elkfencedistillery.com or on Instagram @elkfencedistillery.

Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II” and the host of the Barfly Podcast. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at [email protected]