Southside Sips: Sagaponack Farm Distillery’s Gin and Juice

When the only non-local items in your cocktail are the sugar and citrus, well, that’s a pretty good version of an Empire State sipper. It’s one of the things we really love about the Tasting Room at Sagaponack Farm Distillery, proving over and over how creative (and delicious) drinks can be using things grown right outside your door, and not too much further.

Owned my sixth-generation farmers and siblings, Marilee Foster and Dean Foster, along with stellar distiller Matt Beamer, the distillery is kind of a unicorn marvel around these parts, where wine is king and beer brewing a not-too-far-off second.

It’s been an inspiration for Marilee, who custom-designs the labels with her innate artistry and names most of the cocktails, too.

“I didn’t know it was a popular song when I named it,” she says of the Tasting Room’s Gin and Juice, referring to the 1994 Snoop Dogg hit. “I grew up working around men who called any cocktail with gin and fruit, gin and juice.”

But its name belies the drink’s fascinating components, each so beautiful on its own, and together make a fruity, savory, tart tipple that’s awfully quenching in these late-summer days.

The gin is the main event, and it’s their barrel-aged version — their own wheat milled and a bevy of botanicals, all distilled and then stowed in a barrel once used to age their potato-based Single Sweet whiskey-like spirit. It’s combined with their very excellent (and undersung, if you ask us — grab a bottle if you can for its multitude of uses) Rhubarb Liqueur and Marilee’s friend Rachel Peach of Current Cassis, who makes her gorgeous version of currant-based cassis in the Hudson Valley.

It’s not a bad way to kick off Labor Day Weekend. Or, really, any weekend. Cheers to a great and bountiful summer, South Forkers!