It's the Brew
podcast.
The drive, Brew
Linda Horace, of course, here, an international
food judge and beer judge,
and our guest today is Lorraine Barber.
She is co owner of Barber Lee Spirits.
It's great to see you again. It's been
too long. Give us a history of Barber
Lee Spirit. Barber Lee Spirits is our little
distillery that could in Petaluma. We're grain to
glass, so we're making everything in house. We
start grain and build up. We open to
the public in the beginning of 2019.
Our timing couldn't have possibly been better.
Yes, of course. It's myself, my husband, Mike
Barber, and our partner Aaron Lee. So that's
Barber and Lee. But you started the winery.
Yeah. So we also have Before that. Yeah.
We we've been my husband and I have
been making wine for almost 18 years, Barber
Cellars. Wow. You guys are busy. Yeah. We
also launched a Petaluma Cheese Shop in the
wine tasting room
last October. So that's that's a thing too.
Right.
When I first met, Lorraine and Mike, my
friends were doing these things called the Petaluma
food tours, and they took us over to
their wine tasting room to try some cheese
and wine, of course,
and that was really great. And Lorraine had
a brand new baby
and a brand new winery business and then
so now she has 2 kids since then.
Mhmm. Plus the they started the distilling later
and and the cheese shop, it had
a pandemic
and fires and moved different to different places.
And they you guys have such a cool
little the the tasting room for the distillery
is like it's like an old fashioned speakeasy
kind of. You could actually even get a
cocktail there. Gotta love that. Oh, yeah. Definitely.
Yeah. We do. We have a great craft
cocktail program.
Yeah. You can come in for
do a tasting of the spirits we produce.
You can come in for a cocktail. You
can combine the 2.
But, mostly, we just wanted to create a
space where you felt comfortable
to enjoy spirits. Petaluma Hotel, so she has
a they have a great location.
So right by, you know,
downtown Kentucky Street, super walkable Petaluma, which I
really love, and
I mean, you can just go from place
to place to place. And now Gusto has,
like, their sandwich shop in there. Right next
door. Yeah. That would come in handy. Yeah.
It's great.
We're we've got a good little block going
on because Volpe's is right there too. And
They're open to the public.
Barbara Lee is Sunday,
Thursday through Sunday for tasting tours and cocktails.
And you can enjoy a flight of their
spirits
and they've got a full cocktail menu which
I'm sure is
amazing. Oh, yeah. It's actually This must be
incredible. Also open Wednesdays, and Wednesdays is, happy
hour all day. So half price cocktails all
day. Oh, jeez.
They do a deviled egg competition.
Yeah. That's right around there. Super fun.
Near Easter and butter and eggs day parade,
of course. You're really active with all the
Pelham stuff. But what's coming in this supplement
for Christmas? Deviled eggs. Yeah. You should come.
Yeah. Yeah. We, people really come with it
too. They,
the I thought, you know, we I was
surprised that the town didn't have a deviled
egg competition
prior because it's the egg basket of the
world. Exactly.
No. It was. It was. Well, you know,
we'll we'll we'll we'll still own it.
But Of course. We,
yeah. I just,
one one Easter, I was making deviled eggs
and then thought to myself, wait.
Why
this must exist? And then it didn't, so
I'm like, well, let's start it.
So we we benefit I like to it
it's like philanthropy through our means. Right? Like,
we don't have a lot of means, but
where we do, we like to flex. So
we partner with
Pedal and People Services.
So it it benefits them,
and that's also who we're partnering with for
we have a a fair coming up in
now. It's 8th year, the holiday food fair.
So they're they're also the nonprofit beneficiary
of that.
That's gonna be the Tuesday before Thanksgiving
at the Hotel Petaluma.
Oh, tell us what's entailed with that. I
I've been to the gingerbread kind of fair
thing that they did with the crafts. Yeah.
That's the hotel puts that on, which is
great.
The holiday food fair started
out of,
the
the 7 the 2017
fires,
because we just weren't reordering,
any kind of food from any of our
food vendors
around the time when they really that's their
time to to really make hay. So
we figured that probably was happening all over
Sonoma County, so they were just really hurting.
And we thought, what can we do?
So in partnership with the hotel, which has
been an incredibly
supportive partner,
We,
we set up basically an indoor farmer's market,
in the ballroom of the hotel, and it's
only local food vendors that you support directly,
and try try new stuff, maybe find something,
you know, a new favorite thing of yours.
You can get gifts there too,
and, and, yeah, you can you can just
explore your town in one one room. The
catalyst for inviting you back on again is
I saw,
an artist courier article
about a Filipino spirit. I'm gonna see if
I can say this right. Lambanag,
from, I think that's in in Tagalog, Lambanag,
and it's a Filipino spirit being made in
Petaluma, and I was like, oh my gosh.
So I reached out to you then, and
then Kathy reached out. She's like, did you
see this? I'm like, oh, yeah. I'm already
talked to it because this is unusual.
I my dad was in the navy. I
heard him I remember him talking about this,
but I've never seen it personally. I'm sure
I'm sure, you know, the sailor drank it
all before I made it to pronounce it
again?
Oh, I'm not gonna like, I just say
laminog.
I'm I'm not gonna That's fine. I I'm
just gonna read it phonetically. Yeah. Yeah. What's
it made of? And,
let me have a taste. You had that
little one there. Let me get you another
one. That was just
That was that was a little amuse bouche.
Flooring here. Yeah. So laminar it's made from,
coconut palm nectar. So, like, the flowers,
and,
we,
we're we have a good relationship with, restaurant
Abaca and Pacific Cocktail Haven in
the sit in San Francisco.
And
they were having a difficult time,
bringing laminate in. It's in a lot of
their cocktails.
They're they're both Filipino
based
businesses, and they they were have yeah. They
reached out to us because we were they,
you know, they knew that we could that
we make stuff.
In your system. Yeah. Yeah. They're like, can
you make this for us? And we're like,
yes.
So how how did And then I had
to figure it out. Yeah. Because you had
to get, I mean because coconut
flowers aren't just grown on trees. No, they're
not trees. Yes, they're not. I mean, they
are. They
are grown on trees. We had to kind
of figure it out. I'd never heard of
it before. A lot of people in,
a lot of our friends in the in
the bar community have not heard of it
before.
But Aaron had,
when he was in the Philippines, he he
tried it there. So he had a kind
of a baseline for
what it was,
and he was able to source,
granulated,
like, basically dehydrated palm palm nectar.
And so that's how it got like, we
were were using it.
It's tasty.
It's interesting. What's the alcohol in it? It's
it's 50%, so it's a 100 proof. And
that and that was by request. Thank you
for bringing these tiny Yeah.
Tiny little No. We're really we're really good
at what we do. So, like, there should
never be any burn going down, like, from
anything we make,
but we real you know, we it it
makes it at this strength, it really makes
it an excellent mixer too. And yes. Because
you can still
taste it. Yeah. What are some of the,
cocktails using this stuff would you suggest?
Well, there, right now at at,
at
your tasting room? At a at a baca
right now. They're you know, ube is is
very common to use with with this in
our tasting room right now. I haven't launched
it yet, but I'm about to. I'm making
a sour
with it.
Like a you mean like a whiskey sour?
Kinda like a whiskey sour. Yeah. With,
yeah, with,
like ginger and and lemon and lime and
things like that. I like that.
Yeah. That makes sense. And, honey, It reminds
me of Pisco, so I could see, like,
a Pisco. It's really versatile. Yeah. It reminds
me a little bit of Pisco. It's,
it it's even though it's coca with coconut
sugar and the coconut nectar, it's not coconutty
or sweet. It's
almost a little savory. Like toasted coconut. Yeah.
Like toasted in in the nose. And,
what do you age it in? Oh, well,
it's a white spirit, so there's no age
on it.
Yeah. It's it's ready to go. Can you
age it? You can. Like almost like a
rum? You can. I've I've never I
I haven't seen it done that way, but,
that might be a you know, we're always
game for new projects. So that might be
something down the road that we might wanna
experiment with. It's Lorraine Barber, co owner of
Barber Lee Spirits in Petaluma.
This first liquor we're tasting is Filipino.
Lombanag.
Yes. Okay.
Explain to everybody what else you do at
Barber Leaf Spirits. What you're you're making whiskeys
and We are primarily we're a whiskey house.
So we do,
a single malt rye whiskey. We do an
heirloom corn bourbon,
which is mostly hopi blue and bloody butcher
red.
What? Yeah.
We we it's not intentional, but we sort
of
end up ended up making all these spirits
that are just hyper unique and aren't really
well represented
out there. Like, we do an absinthe launch,
and we do a white and an aged
rum of piloncillo,
which is,
organic
cane juice that's cooked down and put into
cone shaped molds to to set. So you
you see it a lot like for for
cooking. Yeah. It's a it's a Mexican thing.
Pilonchillo.
Yeah. Sugar and it's looking a little brown
cone. I remember getting them when I was
a kid. Pillon cone. Yeah. Yeah.
So we,
I I think outside of Mexico, we might
also be one of the few places or
only places,
making rum out of that.
And, yeah, we're we're not we're not really
trying to be,
you know, avant garde that way. We just
sort of pursue the things that that we
find interesting and and want to drink.
Now your husband, Mike, he is are he
the distiller or you're the distiller?
He he's the master distiller,
but we're all like, the 3 of us
do
we all we all know how to do
all the things. Wow. Aaron Aaron does
a lot of distilling as well,
and I can step in when needed.
But we all we also all wear because
it's just the 3 of us. We wear
a lot of hats. So we kind of
go into
our skill sets and Sure. Yeah.
Barber
Lee Spirits
in Petaluma. Barber Lee spirits.com.
You got the rye.
And then you I like rye. Give give
this to.
K. This goes
with
that. Here you go.
So
this That one was a throat burner. Sorry.
Chase it with the other thing.
So,
what you just tried is a new thing.
We
so I'm I'm Canadian
and,
a,
which is,
you know, might be why I'm really into
rye, but,
I I thought, what's the most Canadian thing
we can possibly do?
So we sent
one of our emptied rye barrels to a
maple syrup producer
and had them fill it with
maple syrup, aged it in their outdoor rig
house for a year, so went through all
the seasons.
And then they, you know, they they bottled
up that maple syrup for us, sent that
back. So that's one of the things that
you just tried. But then also they sent
back the barrel that had the maple syrup
in it. So we refilled that barrel with
rye to finish
it on in it,
and that's the rye that you just tried.
So it's our maple finished rye, which is
just the most Canadian thing I can This
would make a killer Manhattan
or old fashioned. So what are you making
with this and the whiskey. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
We we haven't syrup. We we
well, with the rye, we haven't even released
it yet. Oh. We're in so it's a
cup you're getting a preview. Wow. Yeah. We're,
we're gonna be releasing it in a couple
weeks.
The syrup, we just got literally just got
it back in, so it's just on the
shelf today. My Ukrainian friend when she was
here that came on the radio show, she,
had some they she bought some of this
as her souvenir
from, from Sonoma County, one of her souvenirs
besides, of course, pliny and all kinds of
other stuff. But Of course. But she actually
the she brought back some aged maple syrup
back to Switzerland where she's, you know, hanging
out with you. Very warming. Yeah. It's delicious.
Yeah. A a lot of the times you
see, you know,
maple,
like, you know, bourbon maple, something like that,
and you don't really
the flavor of the of the whiskey doesn't
really come through. So that's why we really
like working with this producer because it does
go into their outside
What part of Canada is that coming from?
Oh, no. No. This is coming this is
domestic. So I I can't send it to
Canada. The the maple syrup. Oh, it's like
it's like Wisconsin. Oh, okay. Where in Canada
did you grow up? Toronto.
One of my favorite places on the way.
I grew up in Detroit and we used
to drive next to Toronto a lot and
hang out.
What a cool town. It's yeah. I I
I miss it. I'd like, you know, hopefully
next year when things calm down a little
bit. You moved to Sonoma County?
It's a Sonoma County. We moved in
o eight, maybe.
Yeah.
I got a job offer
in
the seventies from Chum FM,
c h u m Yeah. Yeah. Which at
that point then was my favorite radio station
in the world.
And I was in Toronto and met with
them. They heard I played in my air
check and they said,
you're hired for weekends
to start. And I went, oh, jeez.
Well,
I mean, I wasn't gonna move to Toronto
from Detroit
to work 2 days a week.
I couldn't afford it. And I didn't wanna
get another job
or any job because I don't work.
I've been doing radio 51 years. But anyway,
Chum FM, and I hear I check them
out sometimes and they're still happening.
C h u m Chum FM. That sounds
like one that would be from where where
would where did they film Jaws?
Isn't that called chum when they put it
in the water where they're sharks? Exactly. Well,
that was part of the joke. That would
be fun, actually. She's Lorraine Barber,
along with her husband. They co own Barber
Lee Spirits along with the Lee family.
And,
you you guys, you and your husband have
been making wine for quite a while and
still are. Right? Explain Very much. Yeah. The
wine situation.
So it is it is very much a
situation,
because it it feels like that I'm coming
out of harvest right now too. But, yeah,
we've been making wine for
18 years or so.
And It's Barber Wine? It's Barber Cellars. Yeah.
Cellars. Yeah. So the the wine tasting room
and the distillery
with its tasting room are right next door
to each other Oh, cool. Downtown. Yeah. So
we're actually the 1st downtown wine tasting room
in Petaluma.
We
we started, like you know, everybody starts. We
would source fruit and,
work at at,
from,
co ops and stuff.
And then just evolved into at this point,
we're farming maybe
12 acres or so around Sonoma County. Wow.
Kind of figured it out as we went.
Have a little dedicated winery in Petaluma.
And,
yeah, just kinda
have a very strong volunteer set that help
us out at very stressful times.
But mostly, it's you know, we're doing punch
downs right now and
pressing and cleaning and, all of that stuff.
But we, you know, we we make more
wines that are to our taste, things that
we wanna drink, just like with the spirits,
the things we're reason, which is why we
like Sonoma County to visit very free with
what you can do. There's not a lot
of restrictions of, like, well, you have to
do this. So Well, that's
what the drive is. Yeah. 16 years of
No rhyme or reason. Whatever the hell we
want. It's you know, it it fits into
Petaluma really well
that way. But, yeah, we kinda focus more
on Kalatao
styles and and then yeah. I wanna talk
about your spirits club. Yeah. But, first,
any retailers
for the spirits?
We yeah. We,
different things at different places because we have
to operate through a distributor, so we can't
just be direct.
Willoughby's,
Bottle Barn,
locally. You can find some of our some
of our stuff.
And the wine. And and around. And the
wines as well. The wines are just through
our tasting room at this point. Yeah. Because
we since we launched,
Petaluma Cheese Shop,
it's it's great,
but we,
were were being visited a bunch, which is
awesome, and I and appreciated, but we, we
aren't.
We're really tiny producers, so we aren't making
Yeah. Enough to,
to support a wholesale program. Makes sense.
Now for Barber Lee Spirits, there is a
spirits club.
You can sign up at Barber
Lee spirits dot com.
Talk about these spirits club. Oh, yeah. So
that's, every
quarter.
There's no fee there's no, like, membership fee.
It's just whatever
the contents of the club is minus 15
or 20%,
depending on the tier of the club. So
it's 2 bottles or 4 bottles. Yeah.
And, it's all we we always try to
put in whatever the new thing is
into that club. Yeah. Pickup parties and all
that. We do. Yeah. The the the big
benefit there is that every time you come
in, it's half price clock cocktails for you
and 6 friends.
And
yeah. So that's yeah. I mean, we want
you to come in and hang out, and,
we're happy to make cocktails for you.
So now there's so there's the 2 different
taste rooms because you still right? It's not
all in one now. So you still have
the wine one? And the distillery. And and
then the distillery with the with the Cousteau's
new sandwich shop in between. What is it
called now? It's it's just Cousteau's. Yeah. Cousteau's,
yeah, bakery. Yeah. And then you could walk
over
to Copperfields and, you know, have a couple
drinks and then go read a book. Yeah.
Or, you know That sounds like a nice
afternoon. I never thought about it that way,
but, yeah, that's That's what I'm gonna go
do. Go over the sugary and get some
oysters Absolutely. For em Hue Pueblo
or Easy Rider, which is fantastic. They're Yeah.
They're
they're they're fabulous. Easy Rider restaurant, that's a
great one. They do a locals night every
Monday also.
They're probably doing some of your spirit tours.
That's kinda cool. Yeah. Yeah. They just, I
think they just put on a new cocktail
that uses our Gravenstein apple brandy Oh.
Which is a pure Gravenstein
apple brand. Like, we go to an orchard
in Sebastopol. They press the Gravensteins for us,
and we Yeah. Yeah. Churn that into awesome
apple brandy. So it's called I think they're
that cocktail is called Howdy Neighbor,
which is
lovely. Okay. Lorraine Barber is co owner with
her husband and the Lee family of Barber
Lee
Spirits in Petaluma.
Barberleyspirits.com.
Okay. What is this?
That is I brought some of our our
new wife. Strong because I got a wine
glass. She pulled it down. And she she
gave you a healthy pour, which is good.
So that is
our,
second label that we started
at the winery,
Brutal Hill named after our Zinfandel Vineyard, which
is an insane vineyard to farm. Is this
At the top of the city, that's
facade on the wall. Actually so so our
second label kind of allows us to play
a little bit more.
So this is a blend of
vermentino,
marasan, russon, and chardonnay.
Wow. I know. It's spectacular.
It I wish I had a little bit
more of a chill on it right now,
but,
you know, we're
it says it's it's colder than than it
is outside,
which is Yeah. It's almost 74.
Fall weather is here finally, at least for
a while.
And then I brought the wine because, you
know, I brought the cheese.
Although, I do like spirits
and cheese, like bourbon and cheese, things like
that. So whiskey go like, if you have
sushi or cheese or chips or chocolate, you're
you're usually in good good shape.
Very cool.
Back to the
drive brouhaha
guest, she is Lorraine Barber, co owner of
Barber Lee Spirits in Petaluma, and
they've been making wines
for many, many years.
And, now talk a little more about the
the the cheese shop. I just brought sort
of a little sampling of, the things that
we offer at the cheese shop. The white
cheese, the solid one there, that's actually
called it's called Brabender. It's, goat's milk Gouda
out of the Netherlands. Oh, it's delicious. God,
that's good. Yeah. It's everyone's gateway goat. You
never really see goat, as a hard cheese.
It's always soft. I love goat cheese and
this is really good. Too, but this is
this is in a different, like, way. It's
a different way to approach it, and they
make it the best, I think. What's the
you've got, like, a different sauce kind of
thing with that. Yeah. So there's also that
that brown sauce there is,
cajeta.
Oh. It's a caramel sauce made with goat's
milk. I know what that is.
And we find that that's a really good
accompaniment for cheese and also ice cream and
also just eating by the spoonful in front
of the refrigerator when you're trying to figure
out what else you want to eat.
And When I was a kid, we used
to eat kind of over ice cream. Yeah.
It's a Spanish thing. Yeah. It's excellent. And
then, that orange cheese there is called, is
a French cheese called mimolette,
and it's, Slow down and say the name
again. Mimolette.
Okay.
It's I I think of it sort of
if the French made Parmesan. It would kind
of be like this because it's kinda nuttier
and creamier,
I think, than than than traditional Parmesan, which
is amazing. I love Parmesan. Like, there's no
it's just a different flavor. Italian and I
no. This this that's amazing. Yeah. It's really
nice. And then that, that kind of gooey
cheese on the spoon,
yeah, that is a local favorite. That is,
from Point Reyes Creamery,
in located in Petaluma And we love that.
And also Point Reyes.
It's their Quinta.
So it's, it's called the, like, a Montour
style. So it's wrapped in cedar bark
for the aging process. But what they do
that's unique
that I think makes theirs just the best
is they soak their the cedar in a
bay laurel tea.
And so that flavor,
that herbally just infuses into the cheese. I
could guess, bone and eat a pint of
this stuff. It's nice because you can't I
know, like, you're, you know, you're far away
on a desk, but so that's that's the
you can see the cedar, the the tree
bark right there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's nice
because if you just leave it at room
temperature,
it it's its own dip in its own
container.
So it really makes it nice for parties
and, yeah, I can definitely just eat it
with a spoon. What do you pair these
with? Are you pairing them with brownie? We
do
one one the other sorry. The last thing
that's on that plate is
butter,
which is we also sell butter. So that
is also French. It's, Rudolf Meunier, arguably one
of the best butters in the world. We're
very lucky with our resources that we can
bring that in. That's good. That is Yeah.
It's just good. So cheese butter is a
byproduct of making cheese, which is why we
we carry eating butters. I call I I
for me, it's like there's, like, you know,
there's cooking butter and then there's eating butter.
Yeah. I agree.
You know, they're different things. Julia Child used
to say the same thing. Yeah. Mhmm. She
didn't like to eat anything that didn't have
cooking butter in it, and then she loves
the other butter. Absolutely. Yeah. Like, just eating
it whole. Yeah. Absolutely. So we have we
have a number of different butters in the
in the shop too. Very cool.
I for for what we offer in the
cheese shop is we have a a full
cheese focused menu.
So we do you can do a cheese
tasting, which changes every week. We we want
you to safely be able to explore the
world of cheese. Oh.
So it's 8 different cheeses plus accompaniments, and
you can, like and it's it's insubstantial
amount.
Essentially,
like, I might not look it, but internally,
I'm basically a grandmother, and I'm like, everyone's
too skinny. No. You don't look like eat
more. Like, nobody should be leaving hungry, so
everything we do is made to share. Good.
So we do, like, burrata where you get
the whole ball because otherwise, you don't understand
what burrata is and and things like that.
Of cutting into
the burrata. Yeah. I love your places. I
love how you have it decorated. It's super
homey.
The the distillery part is, like I said,
it's kind of like a speakeasy, and then
the winery shop
is that that's where the cheese Yeah. Happening.
Uh-huh. It's very kind of Victorian and pretty.
And Can you pour it? No. No. No.
What's that? That's the wine.
Yes. Just a tad. I'm I've got so
many cheese flavors.
I did yeah. I wanna I I know
I probably I brought
even more cheese that I didn't because I
was like, I don't know. This is a
lot of cheese. I'll take it home. No.
I'm leaving it here with you guys. Oh,
okay. Thank you. Thank you. I'm I'm not
a tease. It's not just like try it.
No. There's that other little cheese there in
the green kind of Japanese So this is
this is the dirt lover from Green Dirt
Farms. K. So it's an ash rind,
ash rind,
sheep's milk brie.
You're more than welcome to try it. Like,
you more we can open it. So, Wisconsin,
I believe. Yeah. So you're not you know,
I kinda like that. So
the a lot of the taprooms will, you
know, local local local as far as, like
like, beers, but it is nice to taste
things from other places. And with somebody
who understands them and knows about them and
has some, you know, either a relationship or
expertise about the things, and I I I
think the same thing with cheeses. Because if
you are a local,
you do wanna try other stuff.
Absolutely. Yeah. And that's why we do the
cheese tasting where we change it every week
because
it's it's a big and an intimidating world
of cheese out there. Yes. And when you're
at the store, it just all looks like
cheese.
So what a lot of the time happens
is people stay in there,
like, known, you know. Like, I know that
I like this because it's expensive and I
don't wanna commit to something I don't need.
Oliver's looking in the cheese section. I just
I started getting dizzy.
It's it's it's And I just wanted to
know how much for everything.
Right. You know?
Yeah. So It absolutely. So that's that's why
we change the cheese tasting up all the
time because we want you to like, maybe
you find your new favorite thing or maybe
you just got confirmation that you don't you
really don't like something. Talking again about the
location in Petaluma, and you've got this
the spirits. Right. Yeah. The wine and the
cheese. Yeah. So we're we're right.
We're right downtown Petaluma.
We're,
we're the the cheese shop and winery co
share a space in the we're at the
base of the Hotel Petaluma.
The distillery and its tasting room are right
next door,
kinda sandwiched between us and Volpi's.
And,
yeah, we're we're,
we're the cheese shop and winery are open
7 days a week.
The distillery is open Wednesday through Sunday, and
Wednesday is, is,
happy hour all day.
Herlinda just brought me is this a, some
kind of bird cheese? This is a sheep's
milk.
Sheep's milk. And it ash. Brie. Yes. Okay.
Brie. Yeah. Not,
vegetable ash. Okay. Yeah. So it's That's incredible.
A lot of the time when you see
ash on on cheese, it looks kind of
intimidating and looks like it's gonna be a
stronger flavor, But what ash does is that
actually tempers down the the the intensity of
cheeses. So, like, you can have the same
two cheeses, but if one is an ash
rind during the the the aging process, that
one's gonna be more mellow. How'd you learn
about the cheeses? What what got you I
I like eating stuff.
Yeah. And as we go, you know, I
I,
at this point, I'm just spending a lot
of my time cutting up cheese.
Very cool. And eating it, it's a it's
a it's a it's a charmed life. You're
doing a great job.
Yeah. And that,
wow. Yeah. And we also serve the you
can get the charcuterie. Like, we do a
charcuterie board from the cheese shop that you
can get in the distillery Oh, cool. While
you're while you're sampling all the spirits. Oh,
hell. I gotta get down there. You should
go down. I think you would enjoy it.
And then what about, like, during happy hour?
Like, you're doing these cheese boards and all
that? So so for the distillery,
it's the full menu. We don't do, like,
a, like, a limited menu. It's our full
menu. It's just the cocktails are half price.
Yeah. That's phenomenal. I don't wanna pull we
don't we want you to be able to
really experience
what we have to offer. And and I,
you know, I I develop a lot of
the cocktails for our cocktail program, and,
they're they're really
like a high caliber craft cocktail. That sounds
pretentious as I'm saying. Yeah. But but I'm,
you know, we're proud of what we do.
We work really hard on on making our
spirits. We work really hard on making sure
that we're delivering
the best possible to everybody. 2 young kids
and 3 businesses
Uh-huh. Through a pen like, you know, our
pan pandemic and then, of course, our local
fires and Yeah. You know, all these things.
I'm like I'm like I mean, I've known
you 9 years now since you since you
started this, and I'm, like, just so in
awe of you right now. That's really sweet.
I don't know what the alternative is. Like,
there's there's really you can either just stop
or keep going. That's that's that's all there
is. Amen.
She is Lorraine Barber, co owner
of a Barber
Lee Spirits in Petaluma. They've also got the
cheese shop, and they sell wine,
Barber Cellars.
They're very busy,
and they do a great job. And Lorraine,
great to see you again. Nice seeing you
too. We'll we'll always make time to to
host everything. Yeah. We need to. Okay. And
I thank you so much for for
having having me on today. It's so nice
to come come by again after so long.
Tell me, tell us again really quick about
what's happening for Christmas.
Oh, so, one for thanks for for Thanksgiving,
it's the holiday food fair. You can find
tickets at holidayfoodfair.com,
which I cannot believe that that was not
taken. It's a great way. It's, you know,
2 days before Thanksgiving. It's a great way
to set your Thanksgiving table or get food
based gifts for everybody.
And then also we're about to launch tickets
for
our 3rd annual,
local Makers Fair
which is gonna be happening the Tuesday following
the 1st Tuesday of December. So the that'll
be available on our website.
Oh. Wow. Well, I love all the stuff
that that you guys do. I always have
the best time. Also, the stuff in,
Petaluma Hotels remodel is amazing, so we're thrilled
to have you.
Alright, Lorraine. Great to see you again. Thanks
for coming in, and we'll Thank you. We'll
see you soon. For having me. Okay.