bon appétit: How One Man’s Obsession with Fruit Created the UK’s Most Exquisite Spirits

Barney Wilczak and his tiny distillery are bottling the wildness of the orchard.

BY OSAYI ENDOLYN

May 12, 2025

“The fruit is coming.”

The urgent phone call that Barney Wilczak anticipates typically comes in the middle of the night. The caller is one of his local farmer partners who has just walked their orchards to touch, smell, and taste the fruit. The brief exchange notifies Wilczak that the quince, perry pears, blood oranges, raspberries, or damson plums destined for distillation are ready to harvest. A distiller of groundbreaking eaux de vie, Wilczak describes his work as being “in service to the fruit.” Part of that service is to represent the fruit at its highest level of flavor, to harness its essence. So the processing must begin right away. Wilczak takes the farmer’s call as his cue, rises in the early darkness, and prepares to receive by the truckload literal tons of fruit.

Wilczak built Capreolus Distillery in 2016, on the same property as his childhood home in Cotswold, southwest England. His eaux de vie have an almost unnerving ability to transport the drinker to those abundant fields. The region is known for its endemic fruits, many of which don’t appear in other parts of the world. The name Capreolus refers to the deer that frequent Wilczak’s garden. “They’re the most beautiful native deer we have and they’re so ephemeral,” he says. “You see them and then they disappear. It felt apt, as we try to capture things that only last for moments.”

That late night/early morning phone call from Wilczak’s farmer collaborator wouldn’t have been a surprise. Wilczak firmly believes that production revolves entirely around the wisdom of the trees and the people who cultivate them, not marketing drives or quarterly sales targets. Every piece of fruit that arrives at the distillery is hand-sorted to check for outliers of “too much softness or spring,” before it is hand-pressed and guided through distillation and bottling.

Hand-sorting gooseberries at Capreolus. Photograph By Barney Wilczak

You might say that Wilczak practices a type of conservation: His farming supports much-needed biodiversity, and drinkers around the world can experience hyperlocal plants they wouldn’t otherwise have access to. The quince evokes notes of cinnamon, fig, and dark cherry. It tastes of earth yet bright twig and leaf—to drink these eaux de vie is to be situated in terrain.

“Last year we spent 7.5 hours sorting 700,000 individual raspberries. That’s 3.6 tons,” Wilczak says, with a look of bewilderment. All that fruit, time, and effort across a team of four people, yielded roughly three hundred 375-ml bottles. With a sense of pride and maybe surrender, he adds, “It’s ridiculous.”

Wilczak has fans, if not acolytes, of his so-called ridiculousness. Among them, famed cocktail bartender Ryan Chetiyawardana, professionally known as Mr. Lyan, who features Capreolus eaux de vie at Seed Library in London’s Shoreditch, Washington D.C. bar Silver Lyan, and Super Lyan in Amsterdam. He credits Dawn Davies of The Whisky Exchange for introducing him to the spirit. “It was revolutionary to try an eau de vie that represents my favorite fruits as a UK native,” Chetiyawardana says. “Barney sees the whole essence of the plant as not just a biological creature, but what it stands for. I was flabbergasted.”

A view of the orchard

Preserving nature in the bottle

Wilczak found distilling through his love of nature. As a student he thrived in botany and biology, but couldn’t make sense of working nonstop in a lab. He pivoted to study photography and specialized in conservation. In brief, he became a plant photojournalist. “I was photographing habitat restoration on six continents, building media libraries for botanic gardens in 118 countries.” Alongside his studies, he developed a hobby for making ciders, exploring the technicalities of distillation and méthode traditionnelle, a style of winemaking that involves a secondary fermentation in the bottle. The leap to distilling was not a huge jump. “It all comes down to a love for plants.”

As he approached age 30, Wilczak experienced “a bit of a life crisis.” He didn’t want to only document plants for visual archives. He wanted to promote the growth and appreciation of those plants for others. “I realized that people are obsessed with varietal differences in wine, but it’s also true of every single fruit.”

When Wilczak launched Capreolus, his bank account was overdraft by eight pounds, but supported by his partner Hannah Morrison, whose taste became imperative to Wilczak’s process. Everything was once done by hand and muscle, though he’s since acquiesced to buying a mill. He committed to work with farmers within a fifty-mile radius of his home-distillery, and just recently purchased meadowland to plant quince trees, which will soon bring that particular eau de vie production within range (it was previously the lone outlier).

His focus on local farmers came down to pay equity. “Early on I was talking to someone in Finland about wild-picked cranberries and they said, ‘We’ll get them to you for 2 euros per kilo.’ I knew that was really really cheap for wild-picked fruit,” he explains. The fruit would be picked in Russia. “What are the labor laws there? What are people getting paid?” Wilczak wanted to work with people he could meet, with operations he could see. “We wanted to pay people a proper wage, focused on farming well,” he says, a nod to the price point of his lineup, which can range from about $90 to $185.

With his local focus, he learned that there was not “a single piece of overlap in flavor or aroma.” The realization inspired him to learn how these individual expressions manifested. He spent about seven years studying fruit distillation practices in epicenters of Austria, Germany, Italy, and France, and translating non-English books on the subject.

After distilling perry pears from 200-year-old 45-foot trees, Wilczak was shocked. The distillation didn’t smell like fruit. “It smelled like sun-warmed bark, ripe and unripe wood, autumnal leaves, and almost like the grass around the trees,” he says. “My self-guided education had a huge focus on a technological, yield-driven way of working, but that robbed the eau de vie of complexity and organic structure,” he continues. “I became interested in making eaux de vie that are truly organic and expressive of where they come from.” That meant becoming dogmatic about respecting the inherent knowledge of the trees and the ecosystems that allowed them to produce such varied fruit. “Suddenly, the eaux de vie started to smell like the orchards.”

Black currant eau de vie in progress. Photograph By Barney Wilczak

Around the world with eaux de vie

In New York City, Jorge Riera, wine director at Frenchette, Le Roc, and the newly revamped Le Veau d’Or, features Capreolus eaux de vie as the finishing touch on leisurely, decadent meals. “It’s mind-blowing,” Riera says. “The delicacy, the finesse, the floral notes that Barney gets out of it. I was blown away.”

Riera first tasted the lineup in 2018 in Vienna, Austria, at Karakterre, a 14-year-old natural wine conference celebrating producers primarily from central and eastern Europe (the festival now has a NYC iteration going into its fourth year). Riera immediately called his importer, PM Spirits, to see about getting Capreolus to the States. “With the raspberry eau de vie, you feel the fuzz of the fruit in the nose,” he goes on. “They work with nature and it’s beautiful. But for me, I see the result at the dining table. I see the emotions from people immediately.”

One of the more evocative eaux de vie is the damson plum, a quintessential British fruit. “Old recipes of distilling damson take on this slightly jammy, tart note,” Chetiyawardana says. “Barney manages to capture the smell of the blossoms as you walk past the bush. It has that white flower elegance. The purple fruit notes encapsulate the tartness of the skin and the yield of the flesh. It pulls through to this wonderful fresh almond note from the kernel.”

For this writer, Capreolus eaux de vie feels like falling into a safe, warm memory you didn’t know you had. The damson plum is an example of Wilczak’s conservation ideology: “No one knows what to do with a cooking plum; it’s something we’ve lost from our vocabulary. We can let these things slip away. But if we want those genetics as a resource given changing climate, we have to give a justification for them to be grown.” His exquisite bottles make for a compelling reason. The only experience better than sipping Capreolus is to share it with someone as willing to be moved as you.

PUNCH: The Best Blanco Tequilas Under $50

After tasting more than 20 expressions, here are five complex, affordable and additive-free bottles for sipping and mixing.

“Can you recommend a good tequila?” This is a simple question that just about anyone who has an interest in agave spirits likely gets asked by friends, colleagues and family members. But when it comes to modern tequila, it demands a follow-up question: Good how?

Nearly eight years ago, when we first compiled a list of blanco tequilas to taste, it was a month after George Clooney’s Casamigos brand became a unicorn, selling to Diageo for a whopping $1 billion. It seemed like the peak before an inevitable downturn of celebrity-backed tequila. Surely the market could bear only so many; surely this was an aberration. But each time we’ve gathered since, another handful of well-publicized celebrity tequilas have entered the market. Each new high-profile release has made that follow-up question—Good how?—as much a mainstream concern as an industry one. It’s no longer a question of transparency around who is actually making the spirit, but also How?, and Who actually benefits?

Luckily, there are not only more celebrity tequila brands on the market, but there’s also a greater selection of tequilas from artisanal brands who have made great farming, fair labor practices and the preservation of traditional methods their mission. What actually ends up in a bottle of tequila has also become more of a consumer concern than ever. (Spoiler: 70 percent of all tequila contains undisclosed additives, often used to alter flavor or mouthfeel.) The words “additive-free” are now increasingly common on labels from producers who proudly eschew these practices. So, yes, for every great bottle of blanco tequila, there are probably a dozen not-so-great ones, but there is still so much to love about this category, and at an affordable price point.

In searching for best-in-class blanco tequilas, we focused on value and bottlings that were singular without breaking from the qualities that have come to define what we love about the category: salinity, minerality, grassiness, earthiness and, above all, purity. For the tasting, Punch editors convened to taste 21 tequilas priced at $50 or less. As in previous tastings, at best the field showed the incredible range that blue Weber agave can express; at worst, there was unevenness in terms of quality, most often manifesting in spirits that were muted, or perhaps delivered on aromatics but struggled to have the kind of textural complexity and completeness of our top picks. But let’s focus on the positives, shall we? 

Without further ado, here are our favorite affordable tequilas for sipping and mixing.

Editor’s note: Because prices vary by market, certain bottles listed below may retail for slightly above $50.

Mi Casa Blanco Tequila

In 2000, Mi Casa, a family-owned operation, set out to be the best agave producers in the world, with no intention of making their own tequila. Five years later, they decided they’d rather control the process from start to finish, and another six years after that, Mi Casa tequila hit U.S. shores. Produced from naturally sugar-rich agave (with 32 percent Brix, compared to the industry standard of 26 to 28 percent) grown in the highlands of Michoacán at 6,500 feet, the resulting blanco tequila, which is rested in stainless steel, found favor with the tasters for its soft, clean and subtle earthiness, with no hint of the artificiality that plagues so many tequilas at this price point. While it can be found for under $50, this bottle does creep up by a few dollars depending on the retailer.

• PRICE: $49 (750 milliliters)

• ABV: 45.5%

Gran Agave Blanco Tequila

Gran Agave also hails from the highlands of Jalisco, and like Tequila Ocho, it’s produced using traditional methods: Hand-harvested blue Weber agave piñas are slow-roasted in brick ovens, fermented with wild yeast and distilled in copper pot stills. Destilería Santa Lucía, where Gran Agave (among other tequilas, including Costco’s Kirkland Signature brand) is made, is a family-owned operation that dates back to the 1940s, with a focus on heritage production. The resulting tequila is a rich, almost milky expression that manages to be both zippy and restrained, with a pleasant temple spice–like note on the nose. At less than $40 per liter, it’s one of the best values on the market.

• PRICE:  $37 (1 liter)

• ABV:  40%

Azul Force Blanco Tequila

This tequila is crafted at Agaves Selectos Corona in the town of Tonaya, Jalisco, a region known for its tequila heritage. What sets it apart is the blend of traditional practices, such as natural fermentation and using estate-grown blue Weber agave, with modern equipment. The agave is cooked in a 40-ton autoclave before resting with the autoclave door open for 24 hours to stabilize the sugars. Fermentation is entirely natural, relying on ambient wild yeast and lasting between three and seven days before the mixture is distilled in a column still. The result is a spirit that balances clean, high-efficiency distillation with rich, terroir-driven character. The tasting panel found this to be mellow, with layers of complexity that feel exceptionally integrated. A tannic finish makes you want another sip. This bottling is not yet on store shelves, but the importer, PM Spirits, expects it will be within the month; it’s worth seeking out as one of the better values on the market.

• PRICE:  $32 (1 liter)

• ABV:  40%

PUNCH: The Best High-End Spirits for Cocktails

This year, we polled more than 25 bartenders across the country for their favorite high-end spirits to use in cocktails. While several of last year’s top-shelf picks are still highly favored, some exciting newcomers have emerged, along with a few trends: spirits that blur the line between categories (like Scotch aged in ex-rum barrels) seem to be on the rise, in addition to well-made flavored spirits (like a mezcal distilled with mango).

After sifting through the responses, we compiled the most popular choices in each category, plus some standout, impassioned recommendations. Here’s what surveyed bartenders had to say.

White Rum / Cane Spirit

Most popular: Clairins from The Spirit of Haiti

Recent years have seen a great white rum expansion, in which interesting, boldly flavored options have become more variable and more available stateside than ever before. Clairins from The Spirit of Haiti were most commonly mentioned here, particularly the Vaval, a floral and herbaceous bottling, and the Le Rocher, which Adler says is “similar to agricole-style rums, but with an increased funkiness and grassiness. The distillery also uses a percentage of dunder, the residual backwash in each batch, which makes it heavier on the palate with a light smokiness.” Also, these bottlings are still fairly affordable. “Like a lot of rums, some might not call these ‘top-shelf,’” notes David E. Yee, bar manager at Cobra in Columbus, Ohio, but that’s “because they’re radically underpriced.”

Aged Rum

Most popular: Hampden Estate

Tulloch sums it up: “Hampden Estate is high-octane, intense and makes a damn good Daiquiri.” While many surveyed bartenders recommend serving this spirit neat to fully appreciate it, Hampden Estate also shines in cocktails where it plays the starring role, like a rum Old-Fashioned. “I love a good high-ester Jamaican rum and this one ranks high on my list,” says Flowers. “Give me overripe banana, tropical fruit, terroir goodness!”

Overproof Rum

Most popular: Rivers Royale Grenadian Rum

Dennison and Flowers recommend this rum, especially in Daiquiris. “Rum, lime and sugar may sound simple, but with Rivers Royale Grenadian Rum, it is complex,” says Flowers. “It has the grassy, briny flavor of sugarcane juice rum that I love, but it also has herbaceous, tropical fruit notes that play exceptionally well in cocktails.” 

PUNCH: Don’t Know Where to Start With Mezcal? Here Are 10 Producers to Know.

In a category facing increased industrialization, these brands are fighting to preserve regional traditions.

In 2023, more than 400 brands of mezcal were exported from Mexico. That doesn’t include the increasing number of producers who are choosing not to certify their spirits, often labeling them “destilados de agave” (“distillates of agave”) instead. With so many options entering the market, figuring out which producers to seek out in order to support economic, environmental and social justice in a category facing increased industrialization (and the troublesome issues that come with it) can feel like an impossible task. 

To help, we’ve compiled a list of brands that are setting a strong example of best practices for others to follow. Many of them are producer-owned, while others source from a variety of producers but have initiatives in place to encourage positive environmental and economic practices and the preservation of regional customs. There are, of course, plenty of other great producers making incredible mezcal in this vein, but consider this list—most of which are widely available across the United States—a strong starting point.

Cinco Sentidos

What started as the house mezcal for El Destilado restaurant in Oaxaca City evolved into an export brand in 2017. Owner Jason Cox has cultivated long-standing relationships with a core lineup of producers in Oaxaca and Puebla during his time living in Mexico. With Cinco Sentidos, he pays above market price for batches and does not pressure producers to meet certain volume demands; it is entirely up to the producers how much they choose to make and sell. Cox also implemented a 10 percent profit-sharing program to help producers invest in everything from basic personal needs to land and distillery infrastructure.

PUNCH: This Tomato Martini Transcends the Trend

A tomato liqueur turns the internet’s favorite summer drink into a year-round staple.

ne might reasonably wonder why it is that I’ve waited for summer to end to share the perfect tomato Martini recipe. Well, in part, I wanted to let the TikToks, the trend pieces, the Reddit threads—the hubbub over tomato Martinis—die down, because people need to hear this. But it’s also because the secret to my tomato Martini recipe is not beholden to the short, finite window of peak tomato season. In fact, it allows you to tap into the magic of that brief period whenever the mood strikes. That’s part of its beauty. It also delivers what no other tomato Martini can: 72 varieties of the fruit squeezed into a one-of-a-kind liqueur that takes this recipe to the next level. 

The liqueur in question is aptly named Tomates, and it comes from the obsessive brain of biodynamic distiller (and winemaker) Laurent Cazottes. After researching thousands of known tomato cultivars and planting a selection of heirloom varieties on his farm in southwestern France, Cazottes harvests 72 types to be used in this organic tomato liqueur. Picked by hand and left to dry to concentrate their flavor, the tomatoes have their peels, stems and seeds removed before macerating in Cazottes’ own folle noire grape distillate. This pomace is then pressed and redistilled, then combined with some of the original maceration before bottling. The result is an amazingly fresh, delicate liqueur with a hint of earthy tomato “funk.” In a Martini, the liqueur brings a welcome salinity that makes for the cleanest take on the dirty Martini, with just a subtle hint of umami and an underlying freshness.

The Best Tomato Martini

Thanks to tomato liqueur, this summer staple can be enjoyed year-round.

Before you balk at the price, know that I’ve done the math. A half-bottle (375 milliliters) of Tomates will run you a penny under $70. That’s 25 Martinis per bottle, or about $3 of the stuff per Martini. Combining it with navy-strength gin (my recommended base for the drink) and a classic dry vermouth, you should end up with a Martini that costs around $5. For the ability to conjure the best tomato Martini on a whim—even out of season—I’d say that’s a bargain.

Laurent Cazottes Tomates Organic Tomato Liqueur

French producer Laurent Cazottes is known for his preservationist approach when it comes to rare fruits, and this tomato liqueur puts his interests front and center. Formerly named 72 Tomates, and now known simply as Tomates, this unique liqueur marries 72 varieties of heirloom tomatoes—all cultivated by Cazottes at his farm—into a product that is equal parts fresh, funky and savory. With no comparison on the market, it’s a must-try, particularly in a tomato Martini where it outshines even fresh tomato water.

• ABV:18%

Vinepair: The 50 Best Spirits of 2023

Dozens of categories considered, thousands of bottles tasted, and almost 12 months in the making, the publishing of VinePair’s 50 best spirits list marks a major milestone in our calendar and one of our favorite annual traditions.

Consider it not a bonafide buying guide — those can be found here — and instead a highlights reel of the best spirits that graced our palates this year. While we recommend picking up any and all you encounter, or ordering a pour from a bar list, the popularity of certain categories and brands, coupled with the limited nature of some of the releases, means the probability of being able to do so varies wildly from one bottle to another. One constant that links them all, however, and the reason each features on this list: It would be a spirited crime not to honor their existence.

So what made the cut? This year served us no end of imaginative and successful experiments; reminded us that stalwart go-tos carry such reputations for a reason; and encouraged us to look beyond the expected from various regions and nations. Prepare for “bog aged” oak, Mexican eau de vie, and countless representations of brown spirits from non-age-stated to cask strength, single-barrel, experimental finishings, and ultra old.

44. Cobrafire Eau de Vie de Raisin

Chances are, you probably missed the launch of the Blanche d’Armagnac (white Armagnac) appellation back in 2015, but you shouldn’t sleep on the products within the category. This 50.5 percent ABV offering from PM Spirits’ Cobrafire project dances between stone fruit brightness and umami-rich savoriness, and promises to leave a lasting impression.

34. Cinco Sentidos Espadín Capón Alberto Martinez

The “capón” technique referenced in this spirit’s name sees growers remove the sprouted stalks (quiotes) from agave, then leave the plants in the ground for extended periods to enhance sugar concentration. The wait is certainly worth it for this bright, fruity spirit, which shatters any notion that Espadín is a characterless, “workhorse” agave variety.

Clear as a Bell

These elegant (but electric) digestifs are the perfect pick-me-up, nightcap, and grand finale—all in one glass

BY AMIEL STANEK PHOTOGRAPH BY ISA ZAPATA

Once the dessert forks have been surrendered and everyone swears they couldn’t possibly take even one more bite, a final pour of something special on Thanksgiving just feels right. While I can see the merits of trotting out a bottle of bark-bitter amaro or a mellow bourbon that’s seen a few years in oak, these days I take a different tack. When I want to round out a big meal in style, the choice is clear—a clear spirit, that is. I’m talking about things like eau-de-vie, grappa, mezcal, and clairin. Though these liquors are unique in terms of their geographic origin, composition, and production, they share a brazen character, making them ideal meal-enders. Instead of relying on extensive aging in wood to lend complexity, each spirit tastes unabashedly of the raw materials from which they were distilled and the places where they were made. Heirloom apples. Hand-harvested grapes. Pit-roasted agave. Wild-fermented sugarcane. These idiosyncratic products are as lively and expressive as the day they trickled out of the still; with no time spent in barrels to discipline their rougher edges, flavor has nowhere to hide. And at the end of a rich meal, one sharp sip immediately snaps you back to consciousness, like a cold plunge after a sweaty sauna session.

As is the case with all booze, spirits made with care by small, independent producers are going to be more compelling and often boast a price tag to match. But this is the most special of occasions, after all—when else are you going to break out the good stuff?

CYRIL ZANGS – DOUBLE ZÉRO EAU-DE-VIE DE CIDRE

This bright 100-proof apple brandy is a collaboration between culty Normandy cider maker Cyril Zangs and renowned distillery Calvados Roger Groult. It smells and tastes like a brisk fall stroll through an orchard: ripe fruit, a crisp breeze,

LAURENT CAZOTTES – GOUTTE DE REINE CLAUDE DORÉE

Laurent Cazottes’s eaux-de-vie are the stuff of legend, crafted from small parcels of his own lovingly tended trees and vines. To make this style, Cazottes painstakingly dries and hand-pits greengage plums before fermentation, which yields an extraordinarily concentrated elixir.

CLAIRIN VAVAL RUM

Traditional clairin, perhaps Haiti’s most revered spirit, is rum for mezcal nerds. Made from freshly pressed heritage sugarcane varietals and fermented with no added yeasts, each distillation is a unique expression of terroir. This one, from second-generation producer Fritz Vaval, is sunny and herbaceous, each sip gracefully ping-ponging between delicate flowers and salty funk.

Your Sustainable Drinking Starter Pack

Solving the sustainability problem that cocktails pose—or any consumption, for that matter—is no easy feat. But easing into it by introducing low-waste practices and thoughtful sourcing can go a long way. And, thanks to a growing crop of eco-minded spirit producers and drink-makers, there’s never been a better time to drink sustainably.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, there are plenty of ways to lessen the footprint of your own home bar. It can start with a zero-waste approach to using citrus, in which flavor can be extracted from the peels, hulls and pith that might otherwise be discarded, or by seeking out spirits to stock your bar that promote biodiversity, source local crops and support farming communities.

Bottles to Try

Neta: The agave spirits bottler and exporter works with small, family-owned farms to bring their products to market at a profitable price point. As such, producers are able to maintain traditional mezcal practices and crops while avoiding overharvesting or the loss of agave biodiversity for the sake of meeting demand.