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The Florida Winery

The Florida Winery

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

It won’t take long for you to realize that we do things a little bit differently around here. We refuse to accept that wine must taste of grass, tobacco, or dirt. Around here we like our wine like we like our women and ice tea…sweet! We don’t mess around when it comes to wine either, just check out the over 50 awards and medals we’ve won in our first four years!

All talk and no walk you say? Well pony up to our tasting bar and we will let our stunning selection of highly enjoyable libations walk all over your taste buds. Relish in pure unadulterated pleasure without worrying about how your swirling the glass. Sit back, Sip, Enjoy, Relax, Repeat…responsibly of course.

The winery is where the magic happens. All of our wines are made right here in house, just steps from the beach, where you’ll find the most unique winery on earth. Beach real estate isn’t cheap, s0 we squeeze a lot of wine out of a small space: about 900 square feet! We use three 2,000-liter jacket fermentation tanks and nine 2,000-liter racking and aging tanks. Filtering is handled by our 40-plate plate & frame filter, and all the bottling is done by hand right in the front window.

It’s not a lot of room, but it’s enough for us to create the most amazing libations known to man.

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Clear Creek Distillery (Hood River Distilleries)

Clear Creek Distillery (Hood River Distilleries)

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Handcrafted from Oregon orchard fruit, Clear Creek Distillery’s eaux de vie, fruit liqueur, and brandies have, for decades, married classic European brandy-making techniques learned in Alsace and Switzerland with the traditional European pot still.

No colors or flavors are ever added to our brandies. The distinctive “nose,” or initial smell of the brandy in a snifter, is the result of careful fermentation and distillation of perfectly ripe fruit. You will taste only the clear and fiery essence of Oregon’s finest fruits.

Owner/distiller Steve McCarthy and his brandies are respected internationally, served in the world’s best restaurants, and celebrated by connoisseurs everywhere:

“In Oregon, Steve McCarthy’s Clear Creek Distillery is producing what many experts feel to be the best fruit brandies…ever made in the U.S.” (The New York Times Magazine, Dec. 8, 1991). Steve McCarthy received Bon Appétit’s American Food & Entertaining Award “Wine and Spirit Professional of the Year” (September, 2001). His spirits have been called “the most extraordinary eaux-de-vie in America, indeed, in the world” (“The Wine Bible,” by Karen MacNeil, 2001) and “Gorgeous, impeccably pure eaux de vie” (Eric Asimov, The New York Times, August 15, 2007).

In 2014, McCarthy sold Clear Creek Distillery to Hood River Distilleries, Oregon’s largest and oldest craft distillery, which continues to make several of his original products using the same methodology and reverence to high-quality Oregon fruit and herbs.

A legendary figure in the handcrafted spirits business, McCarthy passed away in 2023.

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