Rochelt: A Noble Spirit

It's part of the myth of many Californian wineries: the garage. While an image of the boisterous times of new beginnings immediately springs to mind when one speaks of a "garage winery", the history of the Austrian "garage distillers" has yet to be written. Manfred Wöhrer in Traun, for example, still proudly uses this term today, while the Sulmtal-based Distillery Krauss began in the same vein two decades later. And the most internationally renowned distillates from Tyrol also have their origins alongside cars and tools. Günter Rochelt was a chef when he made his first attempts at distilling in his garage in Fritzens near Wattens in the 1970s. By 1989 at the latest, however, he had defined an ambitious goal - to raise the Austrian cultural asset with the less prestigious name of "schnapps" to a new level of quality.