The Holiday Spirits

Local distilleries share their origin stories and seasonal recipes

By Karl Klockars | Dec. 9, 2023

These days, cocktail menus are moving from vodka-laden lemonades and beach-friendly rum punches to sharper drinks, pairing gin and whiskey with citrus and syrup to create concoctions more appropriate to sweater weather and tree stand sipping. Winter is coming on quick, and while you’re pulling the hats, scarves, and gloves out of the closet, have you considered the holiday status of your home bar? Or thought about what might be the best bottle to gift this season?

We checked in with the teams behind Ethanology Distillation in Elk Rapids and Gypsy Spirits in Petoskey to chat about the high-proof process to bring their beverages to life, how their offerings change as the calendar progresses, and favorite recipes for the holidays.

Ethanology Distillation

Nicholas Lefebre, co-founder and CEO of Ethanology, knows that they’re doing things the hard way.

When he and his wife, Geri, were starting the Elk Rapids-based distillery over a decade ago, they opted to not hire a distiller and have Geri take on the responsibility herself after thousands of hours of self-guided instruction. They committed early to using only locally-sourced grains and fruits to create their vodka, gin, whiskey, and mel, a spirit distilled from local honey. They work on a timeline measured in not months or years but a decade or more out, and they pivoted from the business being a retirement project to a potentially lifelong endeavor.

All of this is in pursuit of one thing: “Our goal has always been to make the world’s best products with the current skill set that we have,” Lefebre says. “So we’re learning along the way, and [we want] to remain focused on one thing, and that’s quality. We don’t want to be a 10,000-case distillery. We don’t want our bourbon or mel to be your everyday spirit; we want it to be your specialization spirit.”

As winter rolls around, the flavors in their tasting room make the transition from clear spirits to oakier ones. “As the temperature drops, … people are more attracted to barrel-aged products,” Lefebre says. “They can be smoky, they can be more phenolic, [with] cedar, clove, cinnamon.”

An oak-barrel-aged gin like their Ferox ($70) is not a typical expression of the spirit, but it plays beautifully in their Newest Wrinkle cocktail. “We are just as passionate about our cocktails as we are our spirits. The same passion that we have for creating unique products in the production area is directly echoed in the tasting room,” Lefebre tells us.

They’ve also created some cocktail gift boxes that are great options for the holidays—the perfect “turnkey gift,” as Lefebre describes it. Ethanology has packages featuring gin or vodka with tonic syrup, their “Mel Fashioned” with bitters and Luxardo cherries, and the aforementioned Newest Wrinkle, all packed into handcrafted wooden crates built locally by Backwoods Specialties.

Black Friday also saw the release of their newest specialty product, Vespera Mel ($125), which translates to “twilight honey” in Latin. The tasting notes for it promise “banana flan and beeswax … bound with delicate resinous smoke.” Lefebre calls it “really, really unique. We’re really excited about it.”

For the Vespera Mel, no recipe is required, assuming you can get your hands on a bottle. “We recommend you sip it neat,” Lefebre says. “A spirit this refined needs no additions.”

The Newest Wrinkle Cocktail

Ingredients
1/4 oz maple syrup*
1/3 orange slice (with rind, muddled gently)
15 drops bitters (to taste)
1/3 oz orange juice*
2 ounces Ethanology gin

Instructions
Fill a rocks glass with large ice cubes and add all ingredients. Stir for 20-30 revolutions and top with additional ice if necessary. Garnish with an orange rose.

To make an orange rose: Using two orange peels, roll the first and then roll the second over the first. Skewer to secure and drizzle maple syrup over the center of the rose.

*Pro tip: Use local maple syrup and fresh pressed OJ to pump up the flavor.

Gypsy Spirits

Even though a trip to Kentucky’s famous Bourbon Trail takes you across hill and dale carpeted with dense bluegrass, one look at the Gypsy Spirits in Bay Harbor will convince you that Bourbon country ain’t got nothing on northern Michigan. (After all, does Kentucky have a view overlooking Little Traverse Bay?)

This 42,000-square-foot facility is now the state’s largest operating distillery under one roof and actually has winter weather to thank for its existence, as frigid temps weren’t great for housing horses by the former tenant, the Bay Harbor Equestrian Center.

Gypsy Spirits has its roots in a much smaller, but also quite chilly spot. According to owner and co-founder Michael Kazanowski, “my brother [Adam, co-founder] and I were living in Colorado and we met a guy on a chairlift who owned a distillery.”

After that, their newfound goal was to open up their own distillery in northern Michigan, but funding was an issue. “So we spent three years working out of our van … and we did that until we saved enough money to produce our first set of bottles of Gypsy Vodka out in Denver.”

So if Colorado was the spiritual origin (pun intended), why Bay Harbor? “We’re from the metro Detroit area, and we would spend almost every weekend up here in the winter time. And we made a lot of really good friends up in this area, and it always just felt like home.”

Sadly, one of those friends passed away in a house fire when the Kazanowskis were in college, and that changed their entire outlook on life. “We decided to be a little bit more free spirited and … get the most out of every single day.” With Michael’s science background and Adam’s in finance, plus some time spent learning the ropes of distilling in Louisville, Gypsy was up and running by 2017.

As autumn kicked in, Gypsy partnered with Blake’s Hard Cider to develop their Apple Pie Vodka ($25) with apple cider and cinnamon, which is still on store shelves. All the same, Michael says their vodka ($20) is still everyone’s preferred product, even in winter. “People always ask what makes it different. We took it all the way back to the basics: A good quality sweet corn that we source from Michigan farmers, and then really good water quality, which brought us up here originally.”

Gypsy sells gift boxes with their vodka that also features a mug, a shirt, and some stickers, but the lavender lover in your life might also want to try their award-winning Petoskey Stone Gin ($35). “We really wanted to encapsulate as much local [product] as we can, so a lot of our botanicals are local, like our lavender that was sourced from [Boyne City’s] Lavender Hill Farms,” which helped it earn the distinction of being named 2020’s Best in Show for an American gin by the London Spirits Competition.

Peppermint Mocha Espresso Martini

Ingredients
2 oz Gypsy Vodka
1 oz fresh espresso
1 oz peppermint simple syrup
0.5 oz chocolate syrup
Whipped cream and chocolate shavings for garnish

Instructions
Mix in a cocktail shaker with ice, shake vigorously until combined, strain into a martini glass, and garnish with whipped cream and shaved chocolate.

Yuletide Mule

Ingredients
1.5-2.oz Gypsy Vodka
1 oz fresh squeezed lime juice
3 oz. cranberry juice
3-4 oz ginger beer
Limes, cranberries, and rosemary for garnish

Instructions
Pour vodka, lime juice, and cranberry juice into a copper mug filled with ice. Top with ginger beer and garnish with fresh cranberries, lime wedge, and a sprig of rosemary. 

Hot Buttered Rum

Ingredients
2oz Mackinac Island Rum
1 tbsp hot buttered rum batter *recipe below
Hot apple cider
Cinnamon stick for garnish

Instructions
To make the hot buttered rum batter: Melt 1 lb butter in a large pot over medium heat. Blend in 1 lb brown sugar and 1 lb confectioners sugar until smooth. Remove from heat and add 1 quart of ice cream (softened), 2 tbsp ground cinnamon, and 2 tbsp nutmeg and whisk until incorporated. Pour mixture into a plastic container and store in the freezer for later use.

Pour rum into glass and add buttered rum batter. Stir to combine and top with hot apple cider. Garnish with a cinnamon stick.