Inside Klocke Estate, a Rare Upstate New York Brandy Distillery

Since the brandy distillery Klocke Estate opened last summer in Claverack, New York, the restaurant has been the draw. It’s dazzling, situated on a hilltop above 160 acres of farmland, orchards, and vineyards. The seasonal American menu from chef Becky Kempter shows off leek croquettes, a spring cavatelli with ramps, asparagus, peas, and mains like roast chicken or lamb shank. Klocke deserves its spot among the handful of mid-Hudson Valley restaurants that are destinations. Of those, it’s undoubtedly the most luxurious.

In the dining room, chandeliers and floor-to-ceiling windows cast soft light over myriad textures: crushed velvet and William Morris-style floral designs on the walls, a marble fireplace with a Victorian tapestry hanging above, and exposed wood beams. Tables are situated around a custom glass cabinet in the middle of the room which displays co-owner John Frishkopf’s library of brandies, Armagnacs, and Calvados. It’s a lush setting to observe the sage-colored Catskills in the distance.

Still, the restaurant, Frishkopf says, primarily serves to “set the table for our brandy.”

At the moment, brandy isn’t flying off the shelves in the U.S, but Frishkopf and his husband, Brett Mattingly, are playing a long game to establish regional brandy’s preeminence. It already has provenance: Laird’s Applejack in New Jersey, founded in 1780, is the very first distillery in the United States (It’s also one of the few legacy brands today run by a woman); And there’s evidence that a man named Jakob Planck brought several stills from Holland to the northern Hudson Valley, around the time brandy was first being exported from Europe by Dutch fleets, in 1638.

The state of brandy in the U.S. doesn’t daunt the founders. “Eventually, the brandy we make here in Claverack,” says Caleb Gregg, director of farming and production, “will sit beside the world’s great brandies, specifically Cognac caliber.”

Frishkopf, a Boston native, was first inspired to make brandy on the plum and apricot orchards of friends’ estates while based in Prague early in his finance career. Returning to the Northeast in his 40s, he wanted to make brandy commercially.

Klocke Estate

Klocke Estate

The region is one of a few places, he says, where conditions for growing cider apples and grapes were always ideal— for brandy, not for wine.

Brandy grapes are harvested earlier than wine grapes, when they have a sugar content (or brix) between 16 and 18 percent. That relatively low sugar produces an alcohol content between eight and ten percent after fermentation, ensuring it will have gr contration of flavor after distillation to 70 percent. Additionally, lower sugar levels result in higher tannin and acid content, according to Gregg, providing the necessary structure for brandy’s prolonged aging process.

In 2017, Frishkopf and Mattingly purchased the property. With the help of veteran distiller Dan Farber in California, Cornell University, and expert wine and apple farmers around New York State, they selected 43 varieties of organic cider apples and nine organic white grapes, all suited to the climate and terroir of the Hudson Valley. Mattingly, an MIT grad, raised on a family farm, designed a master plan for planting using a permaculture approach that weaves sustainability and self-sufficiency into the design. In 2020, the team planted the first trees and vines.

William Geddes/Klocke Estate

Despite that most apple growing in the East has moved south due to risks like fireblight, the team remains committed to organic farming — with an eye to bring back cider apples that used to grow in the region for hundreds of years — with the help of old and new technology. They monitor digital wind, temperature, and sun on large flat screens. They implant organic bacteria cultures to battle fireblight, powdery and downy mildew, and other bacterial infections. They position black locust posts where eagles and red-tailed hawks can sit and hunt larger pests, like voles.

As of this writing, three successful grape harvest and one apple harvest have been pressed and fermented into wine and cider, and distilled in a copper Alembic Charentais still imported from Cognac. Right after distillation, the spirits are transferred to barrels made from aged French oak, where they will mature for another three to thirty years, depending on the batch.

“It takes patience,” according to Gregg. “… and we may find out, in 25 years, that the grapes we’re growing are better suited for younger brandies, for example. That’s the fun part.”

Consumers might not try the estate’s best brandies for decades. Perhaps they’ll keep improving long after Frishkopf and Mattingly retire. With hope, they’ve invested in infrastructure that will outlast them — including the storage facility, the still, and above all, people like Gregg, who, in his late 20s, manages all aspects of brandy production.

While customers wait for the first batch of brandy, Frishkopf sees his role as a teacher and host. In addition to the brandy library, they’re also producing vermouth. Klocke currently sells their white vermouth and sweet red vermouths under the Brevis label, three ready-to-drink cocktails—an appletini, a brandy Manhattan, and a brandy Old-Fashioned—three eaux de vie, and what they call an unoaked brandy, or the Klocke Estate 00.

Klocke Estate

Frishkopf says that their customers will be able to taste the evolution of their brandy over the years, which reinforces the time theme as the through line of the brand. Frishkopf points to the Dutch word for clock as inspiration for the name; the vermouth label Brevis, named after the Latin word for brief; and the ready-made cocktail label, Flyback, named after the term for when a chronograph returns to zero.

During dinner service at Klocke, diners often catch magnificent sunsets. It quickly became a tradition for everyone to emerge onto the west-facing patio with their drinks for twenty minutes to stare toward the mountains where Rip Van Winkle mythically fell asleep for twenty years, across land that has fallen in and out of cultivation for generations. Often, the waitstaff and cooks join them, signaling there’s no need to rush.