My father came to Portland for a visit last week.  While I was scrambling to create a decent itinerary of activities, I sat down with a beer and a few local papers and magazines.  As I plowed through articles about Portland, scanned restaurant reviews and interrogated my friends for suggestions, I wound up killing off a few more bottles than I was planning on.

“If only my pop liked beer,” I thought to myself.  “Then it’d be easy to show him around town.”

After lamenting for a bit and idea hit—why not take him to the distilleries?  My father enjoys wine and Oregon has numerous good wineries, but I wanted to stay in the city.  My father also enjoys a well crafted spirit, and since there are plenty of new and interesting distilleries in town, I did a search for the closest booze proprietors.  This is how I wound up at the Clear Creek Distillery one Saturday afternoon.

Unlike the bulk of distilleries in Portland, Clear Creek has been around for a while.  Steve McCarthy and his clan of brandy making minions have been producing world-class eau de vie since 1984.  Not only is Clear Creek’s longevity impressive, but their ability to exist as a successful distillery without producing a single liter of vodka—largely considered the money-making spirit in the State—or gin is quite the feat.

After arriving at the distillery at 1pm, we were ushered through the spacious but moderately sized warehouse.  Our tour guide was a young graduate from the Siebel Institute in Chicago and although brewing was his passion, he was a walking distillery factoid machine.  When he wasn’t filling my head with information about pear ripeness or the sugar to alcohol ration in Italian blue plums, he was guiding us through the brandy making process from fruit to bottle.

Clear Creek is an anomaly in the craft spirit scene in Portland.  While most distilleries focus on vodka, gin or whiskey and produce only the occasion liquor, Clear Creek specializes in what the French call eau de vie—the water of life—or what us crass Americans refer to as fruit brandy.  However, a New York Times article from August 15, 2007 claims that one must actually taste one of Steve McCarthy’s brandies to understand them:

“Reducing good eau de vie to its dictionary definition, a colorless fruit brandy, is like describing life as breathing. It may be technically correct, yet it misses the mystery of how the dense, aromatic power of an entire orchard of fruit can possibly be packed into a single glass”

The distillery’s most successful eau de vie is the Williams/Barlett pear brandy.  Featuring a fresh, soft fruity aroma and a pear in the bottle, the pear brandy is pure, simple and absolutely delicious.  It takes thirty pounds of pears to make one 750mL bottle of Clear Creek Pear Brandy and after a taste it’s easy to imagine McCarthy and his crew meticulously preparing each piece of fruit with the utmost tender, love and care.

In addition the pear brandy, Clear Creek produces brandy with apples, cherries, plums and an assortment of other fruits.  The most interesting eau di vie is the Douglas Fir, a fresh, minty spirit that I can only describe as tasting like a delicious, boozy swallow of the Oregon forest.  It’s a bracing tonic that fills the mouth with a smooth, refreshing flavor but hits the throat with a sharp, alcoholic bite.

Clear Creek also produces several Grappas (I took home a bottle of the sangiovese variety), fruit liquers and whiskey.  All of the spirits contain Oregon fruit except for two grappas that utilize grapes from Washington.  None of the fruits are grown more than six hours from the brewery, however.

For Steve McCarthy and his Clear Creek Distillery, the water of life is local, alcoholic and ridiculously delicious.