I’ve been to bars concealed behind false phone booths, inside ersatz law offices, and underneath fake fortune-tellers, but no location has felt quite as hidden or as unlikely as the interior corridor of a manufacturing research facility set deep within industrial Goleta. It’s there where you’ll find Goleta Red Distilling Company, the city’s first and only distillery, where owner Michael Craig is single-handedly crafting batches of exquisite spirits and providing tastings to curious customers.
Craig, who spent years working as a chef, educator, and ceramicist, speaks about his new role with the giddy zeal of a man self-actualized. “Distilling is a cooking process; it’s chemistry; it’s a little bit of physics,” Craig explained, sounding like a morally centered Walter White. “It’s just all the things I’ve ever done in my life that I loved.”
Craig initially began distilling as a weekend hobby, building a backyard still and producing his own corn whiskey and bourbon. His wife, Laura Craig, witnessing the satisfaction Craig was deriving from the experience, urged him to pursue the work full-time with a few minor stipulations: “No selling until you’re legal, no fire, no explosions,” Laura recounted. “I’m not going to bail your ass out of jail either.”
