From Spice Cabinets to Spinning Cones
Seth O’Malley’s unusual journey to become the U.S.’s first founding distiller of a completely non-alcoholic spirits distillery, Wilderton Botanical Spirits.
Seth O’Malley used to search through his parent's spice cabinet as a kid, taking mental notes of the scents and flavors of spices like turmeric and black pepper.
At ten-years-old, O’Malley studied his father’s recipe for Thai curry to get his cooking merit badge in the Boy Scouts, adding a large auxiliary of spices, peanut butter, and shrimp paste, just like his father taught him.
In a way, you can say that O’Malley was born for his work. But the reality is a little more complex, as is his journey. His work is the culmination of both his culinary inheritance and openness to experience.
“I would say that the quality that lead me here,” says O’Malley, “is more just an openness, a reluctance to have any immediate knee-jerk reactions.”
Immediate knee-jerk reactions are the stock-in-trade of naysayers in the non-alcoholic world.
While others argued whether it can or should be done, O’Malley decided to ignore the doubters and work with Wilderton Botanical Spirits owner, Brad Whiting, who first proposed the idea of a non-alcoholic distillery to O’Malley in 2018. (O’Malley was then working at the now defunct Townshend’s Distillery, an offshoot of Brew Dr. kombucha.) This was prior to the plethora of non-alcoholic spirits brands we see today.
Seth now lives in Portland, Oregon with his husband, Jesse, and works as the founding distiller for the new Wilderton Botanical Spirits Distillery, the first completely non-alcoholic spirits distillery to open in the United States.
Seth originally grew up in Bend, Oregon, where he became fascinated by plants. Among his favorites is the genus, artemisia. “It has incredible diversity but you can [also] see the thread that connects them: wormwood, sagebrush, tarragon, mugwort,” says O’Malley, “It blows my mind that there’s a thing called genus that contains all that.”
That youthful fascination with plants led him to Townshend’s tea house in Bend, frequenting the shop in high school at 15-years-old. “I was thrilled to see the shop open, they hosted tastings, and I fell in love with tea,” says O’Malley.
Just as he had stood before his parent's spice cabinet at home, he marveled at the 130 different types of teas on the menu that came from a single plant, Camellia sinensis. He took the menu home and began studying. Eventually, he taught classes there at age 18.
That interest led him to herbal medicine and eventually to obtain a degree in linguistics. Though he playfully argues that his degree is useless for his current purposes, those who struggle with plant names in Latin would disagree. Regardless, the owner of Brew Dr., Matt Thomas, reserved a job for him after college. O’Malley came back to work for his previous employer, this time becoming a distiller.
“Around 2011, Lindsay Lohan was on house arrest,” says O’Malley, “And they monitored her blood alcohol level… she wasn’t supposed to be drinking.” When she failed a blood alcohol test during probation, her alibi was kombucha.
According to O’Malley, the whole industry started to panic. The Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) had caught wind of Lohan’s story and, since Brew Dr. was making kombucha with alcohol, the owner invested in a spinning cone column for alcohol removal. He asked O’Malley to help him figure out what to do with the resultant botanical distillate.
“A lot of people would be intimidated,” says O’Malley, “I found it energizing.”
Though he didn’t know exactly what to do, he took the keys to the distillery anyway and began studying the physics and chemistry of distillation. To him, it felt like the next evolution of his interest in botanicals. He had already fallen in love with strong, herbal spirits, including the second bottle of alcohol he had ever tried, Linie Aquavit, a Norwegian spirit with strong notes of caraway. And he had a deep appreciation for Chartreuse, a French herbal liqueur made by Carthusian monks.
“At Townshend’s,” O’Malley says, “I took it as an opportunity to do thousands of iterations trying to figure out how European botanicals spirits are made.” He amassed a collection of every available food-grade botanical he could find and started experimenting.
Not every experiment was a winner, according to O’Malley: “I made a banana aquavit that kind of sucked. [And] I made an aromatic bitters that tasted like a ‘Big & Tasty’ at McDonald's, it came through as iceberg lettuce and mayonnaise.”
He ended up making absinthe, gin, herbal liqueurs, bitter liqueurs, and an American Genepi with foraged ingredients. (Genepi is a traditional herbal Alpine liqueur.) By the time Townshend’s closed, says O’Malley, “I realized I had experience that very few people have.”
According to O’Malley, it was the spirit of “perpetual curiosity” that led him down these paths. For now, landing him a job as the first founding distiller in the United States of an entirely non-alcoholic spirits distillery.
“I have always been… enchanted by [spirits traditions],” says O’Malley, “My role is to challenge them and push boundaries, thoughtfully departing from tradition.”
As we near the end of our interview, he pauses as he did throughout the interview, searching carefully for the right word or phrase, “What’s stopping me? [Non-alcoholic spirits] are already a head-scratcher, why not make something entirely new.”
You can visit Wilderton Botanical Spirit’s tasting room at:
407 Portway Ave, Suite 100 (Ground Level)
Hood River, OR 97031
(541) 240-2498 | tastingroom@wildertonfree.comTasting Room Hours: Open Every Day 12 p.m. – 6 p.m.
NA Americano 0% ABV
One Serving/ 12-14 ounce Highball
1 ½ ounce Wilderton Bittersweet Aperitivo
1 ½ ounce Roots Divino Aperitif Rosso
3 ounces Soda Water
1 Orange Peel for Garnish
Build in a glass, add ice, top with soda, and garnish with orange peel.
Derek Brown is an author, NASM-certified wellness coach, and founder of Positive Damage, Inc.
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