Water & Climate

San Francisco Bay and the open Pacific shape the climate of the entire region. Summers stay cool and mild, and winters here on the coast are rarely truly cold. Dense fog rolls in from the Pacific almost every evening and doesn't lift again until morning. This bay-fog machine keeps the air moist without bringing much rain. The result is a mild microclimate in which coastal sage and California bay laurel thrive.

Alameda itself sits on an island in the middle of the bay, with no major springs of its own. Water for the distilleries comes from California's water supply network, fed in part by the Sierra Nevada. There, in the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, snowmelt collects and flows hundreds of miles through aqueducts into the Bay Area. It's traditionally regarded in the region as especially soft and mild-tasting.

After distillation, the raw spirit often sits at 80% ABV or more, far too strong to drink. Only cutting it with water down to drinking strength turns it into gin at all. Most finished gins end up somewhere between 40 and 45% ABV. Water that's too hard and mineral-rich can mask the delicate, resinous notes of Douglas fir or sage. Soft water, by contrast, lets these subtle aromas come through much more clearly on the palate.

In California, this ultimately brings climate and water full circle. The same fog that keeps the sage moist on the slopes above the bay also shapes the climate of the Sierra Nevada. That's where the water forms that eventually ends up in the same bottle.