Written by matthew dursum
The aroma of grassy licorice releases from a fennel stem as Michael Craig strategically plucks what he needs. From the bluffs where he’s foraging, he can see head-high waves break over the kelp reefs. Clusters of surfers battle for the approaching sets in the distance at a spot called ‘Sands.’ It’s early afternoon in Goleta, California, and as the fog recedes, the breeze grows stronger. With a quick snip, he selects parts of the plant that will go into his gin.
Craig owns Goleta Red Distilling Company, the only distillery in Goleta, and one of the 174 craft distilleries in California. Behind the doors of Goleta Red are bags of turbinado sugar, barrels of molasses, distillation stills, condensers, and a dephlegmator; jars of aromatics such as wormwood, anise, juniper, local orange and lemon peel, and the local fennel he collected from the bluffs are stacked high.
Rums, agave spirits, vodka, amaros, whiskey, and award-winning gin are all part of Goleta Red’s current library. Brazilian cachaça-inspired rhum agricole is a new addition, distilled from local sugarcane grown a few miles away.
Craig’s spirits are expressions of his community and the land where he lives. Goleta is also home to the University of California, Santa Barbara, an institution that values its engineering and science programs, as well as its pumping surf breaks such as Campus Point. Neighboring the university campus are citrus groves and protected bluffs that lead to conservation areas full of marine life.
“I’ve been here for a long time, maybe 32 years,” says Craig, originally a Los Angeles County local. Before distilling, Craig managed a local non-profit’s day program and art studio for adults with disabilities. “I love the area. I love where I live. Until just a few years ago, it was just a sleepy town.”
Goleta is a surf town. His clients—many of them, anyway—are surfers. When he was 16, Craig too, was bitten by the surfing bug. “I always thought surfing was the coolest thing in the world,” he says. So, like any sensible kid from the San Fernando Valley, he wound up in a crowded Malibu lineup, tried to catch a wave, and cut the wrong people off. Craig left the water and three guys, a few years older than him, approached. “‘Valley go home’ is exactly what they said, and they punched the crap out of me. So I got into ocean kayaking instead.”
Even without a board under his feet, Craig’s love for the ocean grew. With ocean kayaking and occasionally scuba diving, he forged his lifelong connection with the water. “On the water, on top of the water, and away from the surfers,” he says.
These days, during his moments of alone time away from the distillery, Craig takes his two person ocean kayak out to the kelp forests off the shore of Goleta and Santa Barbara. At times, he hauls his kayak down the bluffs near his home, and launches it in the knee-high soupy shore break, paddling out to a lonely corner of protected kelp forest.
Alternately, Craig makes the short drive to the Santa Barbara harbor’s boat launch and goes fishing. “I love to do surface fishing for calico bass,” says Craig, who’s been fishing since he was 6. In these waters, the sandbars between patches of kelp hide gargantuan halibut that reach several feet long. “I’ve never caught a legal halibut in my life. It’s been my nemesis. Everybody else does but me.” When it comes to the origins of Goleta Red Distilling Company, it was during these peaceful kayaking sessions in the cool Santa Barbara Channel, where his creative gears turned.
“One day I was mashing to get ready for a brew and my head went, ‘oh, this could make whiskey.’”
Before Goleta Red Distilling Company was even a thought, Craig looked for a creative way to decompress after stressful days at work. “I ended up brewing beer at home to blow off steam and I loved it,” says Craig. chemistry, food, and art have fascinated him his whole life, and brewing beer became an amalgamation of his passions. “One day I was mashing to get ready for a brew and my head went, ‘oh, this could make whiskey.’”
For his home experiment, Craig built a distillation apparatus, known as a still, but found out that it was illegal. “Honestly, I had no clue. I figured if I could brew beer, I could do this. The Feds want their money. I can respect that.” Clandestinely, he tried experimenting, promising his wife that he wouldn’t blow up his house or get arrested. “She was very clear she wouldn’t bail me out.”
Throughout his experiments, Craig fell in love with the process. “I started doing some research. This was probably about 10 years ago, and distillers were starting to pop up across the US and I figured, ‘I can do this.’”
The US Spirits Industry has an annual $200 billion stream of revenue, supporting roughly 1.7 million jobs, making it easy for some entrepreneurs to want to take a swing at it. In 2014, Craig traveled to Gig Harbor, Washington, for an intensive five-day course on the business of distilling. “There were probably 100 people in this workshop and probably only two or three opened up a distillery,” says Craig.
Within 5 years of taking his first class, applying for permits and sorting out legalities, Craig was ready to open his distillery near his home in Goleta, California. Initially, his proposal was met with skepticism. “The City of Goleta had no idea what a distillery entailed. They seemed pretty nervous about it,” says Craig. The city’s main concern was fire. Distilled ethanol is highly flammable and, in fire-country, fire risks are serious. After some back and forth, the fire engineer inspected the building and the City of Goleta, satisfied with Craig’s business design and intentions, signed off.
In California, distillers are legally required to run their distilleries in industrial zones. The location he chose was just a few miles from his home, in the heart of Goleta’s tech industries and warehouses, and the oak forests and bluffs where he forages and walks with his family and dogs.
After the permits were signed, construction began in 2017. Craig hired a friend to help him construct the distillery, fireproofing the structure, and setting up stills and storage units. Right as things were moving along, a massive forest fire, later named the Thomas Fire, swept through the county. A few weeks later, one of the most destructive mudslides in the state’s history cut off Santa Barbara County to the world. Craig had to improvise to get his Ventura-based builder out to the distillery. “I basically had to pay for a ferry to get him around. He got in, stayed at our house for a few days, and shipped back after a few days of work.”
In 2018, Goleta Red Distilling Company opened its doors. Along with Craig’s signature rum, he started experimenting. He made brandy from 3000 gallons of unusable wine that was smoked out and ruined by the Thomas Fire. He then ordered barrels of molasses and bags of turbinado sugar from Louisiana as the base for his rums and neutral spirits—95% alcohol canvases that distillers can use to infuse with bitters and aromatics.
Like a Californian Willy Wonka, Craig churned out his delectable creations. His tipples went from silver rums to golden rums oaked with chard pieces of American oak. Soon, Craig started infusing cacao nibs into the mixture for cacao flavored rum. After experimenting with his perfect blend of 14 botanicals, many of them foraged near his home, Craig created his first batches of Goodland Gin and later his signature Goodland Barrel Rested Gin, a slightly oaky and complex gin with an amber hue.
“I love the area. I love where I live. Until just a few years ago, it was just a sleepy town.”
Support came in waves. First family, friends, and former coworkers, and then the public. Craig assumed that crafting artisanal spirits in a college town with lots of bars and liquor stores would make business relationships easy. “There are some regions in California where there’s a whole bunch of distilleries in a small area and everybody supports each other. That isn’t in Santa Barbara,” says Craig. After years of trying, Craig has placed his products in only a handful of restaurants and storefronts. “As much as everyone says they want to support local and help each other, it’s a challenge.”
In the face of lackluster interest from local businesses and the pandemic, Goleta Red Distilling Company persevered. On a typical day, you can see a mesh of new customers trickling in. Tourists from Captain Jack’s Santa Barbara Tours, students, surfers, divers, and fishers, tech workers, winemakers, brewers, and industry professionals. “A lot of people have discovered that there’s something special and small here,” says Craig, who pours craft cocktails to customers in the evenings at his showroom.
In Craig’s showroom, serious drinkers and tasters have found themselves savoring the coastal flavors of Goleta. Goleta Red has earned several accolades over the years. Most recently, in 2020, his Goodland Barrel Rested Gin won Double Gold at the John Barleycorn Awards and in 2023, Fogo Branco Brazilian Style Rum won best in show at the 2023 event.
For Craig, the awards further justify his commitment to representing his home. Goleta is an area rich in agricultural heritage with a mild Mediterranean climate and long growing season. In the region’s microclimates, you can find sugarcane, papayas, avocados, cherimoyas, and other subtropical fruits. In its hills and valleys are orchards of avocados, citrus, and nuts. Off its shores are some of the best fishing zones in the country. “I wanted to try to capture what Goleta has grown over the years,” says Craig. For his gin and amaro, he uses local orange and lemon peel, lavender, avocado leaves, red peppercorns, fennel, and anise. “For the citrus, I’ll call up a friend that grows them. We make trades,” says Craig. For many of Craig’s spirits, representing Goleta’s sea swept terroir is most important. “The things I’m most proud of are my botanical spirits.”
“I wanted to try to capture what Goleta has grown over the years”
Currently, Craig is working on his newest creation: absinthe. A few weeks ago, he added what looks like a giant tea bag of botanicals into his 95% abv neutral spirit, made from turbinado sugar, letting it macerate. Now, the infusion is ready to go.
Distilling is more than just heating fermented liquid and condensing its vapor. Like sauciers, they blend the layers of distillates to create something unique. “The recipe I have for my gin has 14 botanicals. If I gave that recipe to any other distiller, they’d have a different product. Just because they’d be taking their cuts at different places,” says Craig. This batch of absinthe is not quite there, but close. A few more batches and changes and he hopes to have his recipe finalized to his liking. “I love playing with botanicals. Absinthe is like the king of botanicals.”
When he’s not distilling, Craig is serving his ever evolving menu of cocktails. He changes his recipes daily, depending on the season and what he’s foraged. Like his spirits, his cocktails come from years of mad scientist-like experiments and attention to detail.
Other than his creations and his ocean kayaking gear, Craig has no intentions on expanding. He does hope to hire people with disabilities to do labeling, bottling, and other important work, “I want to stay small and stay local. Local people do local things and beautiful things. If I get too big, I’m gonna lose that.”