In the heart of the Sta. Rita Hills, a celebrated land of popular pinot noir, world-class chardonnay, and sleeper-secret syrah, you can now find epic hibiscus and serrano vodkas. And fascinating apricot, quince, and apple brandies. And yuzu and coffee liqueurs. And one of the best spritz-ready amaros on the planet.
Welcome to Rock 12 Distillery, a farm-to-bottle operation near the corner of Highway 246 and Drum Canyon Road run by Serbian-born Marko and Orange County-raised Sarah Suput. Residents of the property since 2016, their business grew out of a homebrewing passion gone boozier.
“If we do this in an industrial space, I will never see you and not be part of it,” Sarah recalls realizing when they decided to launch a distillery. “Let’s buy a farm on the Central Coast and start a farm distillery.”
As they started planting apple, apricot, and quince trees, among others, they were warned that Santa Barbara County regulations were already tight on wineries, but found that farm distilleries had been included in the planning ordinance. “It was super hard,” said Sarah, but they started distilling in 2022 and launched the brand in March 2023. “There were a lot of roadblocks, but in a very sentimental way, I look back on that struggle, and we met a lot of neighbors and got very well connected.”
She even looks back fondly on dealing with the county bureaucracy. “People we worked with came to love us,” she said. “We didn’t have a lot of lawyers or representatives. It was just us trying to figure it out. When we finally got approval, we felt like we had people rooting for us.”
A visit to the distillery — which requires an appointment — features a tasting of their various liquors and the option for cocktails. Private tours, classes, and events also happen regularly, and they rent out a few vacation homes around the area too. The name is a nod to a Palm Springs development called Smoke Tree Ranch where Sarah’s grandparents have owned a home for decades, always a place of good times.
The base for the clear spirits is often high quality pinot noir and chardonnay from the Sta. Rita Hills that couldn’t otherwise be sold, and then much of the rest comes from their orchard. The brandies are a throwback to Marko’s Serbian roots. “Any fruit that grows there gets turned into brandy,” he said. Their apple brandy is aged in lightly charred American oak, then spends a couple months on port and whiskey barrels. “It’s aged a lot like bourbon,” he explained.
Marko makes it all inside of a barn behind the tasting room. “This is kind of the dream — running my own chemical plant,” said Marko, who was moved to Florida from Serbia by his parents in 1991, just as the Balkan wars were taking off, and worked a day job until recently as a product engineer. “This is the most chemical engineering that I’ve done since USC,” he said.
The couple met in Redlands, where they started a family as Sarah, who earned her degree in divinity from the Princeton Seminary, worked for children’s camps and the American Red Cross. “I was a little lost career wise,” she said, but they decided to focus on their own business after watching Shark Tank. Once they learned about other farm distilleries, like Re:Find in Paso Robles, they realized, “This is feasible.”
It’s been a steady education ever since. “We just read a lot of books and asked people questions all the time,” she said. “We found that this community is very generous with information and resources.”
To make a reservation or learn more, see rock12distillery.com.
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