Amalga Distillery

The Restaurant

Amalga Distillery is Juneau's first distillery, opened in 2017 at 134 North Franklin Street in a timber-beamed downtown storefront that was deliberately designed so that the copper still is the first thing you see when you walk in. Founders Brandon Howard and Maura Selenak named the distillery after the tidal flats north of Juneau and have spent eight years building a spirit programme that centres on a single proposition: that a distillery in Southeast Alaska should taste like Southeast Alaska.

The flagship product is Juneauper Gin, distilled with juniper, citrus, and — the botanical that makes the gin specifically Juneauan — the tips of Sitka spruce, hand-harvested in the Tongass and sweet with resinous forest. The result is a gin that is recognisably a gin, but distinctly Alaskan: balanced, fresh, with a clean piney finish that makes every other gin-and-tonic taste slightly unfinished. Specialty expressions rotate through the programme — Sherry Cask Blueberry Juneauper, Spruce Tip Gin, a Single Malt Whisky distilled from local barley and aged in Alaska — and are released in small batches that regulars queue for.

The tasting room is where Amalga earns its ranking on a restaurant directory. A rotating menu of draft cocktails — grapefruit gin-and-tonics, the "Matcha Libre," a Spruce Collins, the Sea Donkey — is poured at bar seats and at a scattering of high-tops. The bartenders are the distillers on days when they can get away with it, which means the explanation of what is in the glass tends to be given by the person who made what is in the glass. This is a rare arrangement in any city.

The distillery is open from 1 pm seven days a week. No food menu beyond small accompaniments, so the usual move is a cocktail here before dinner at SALT, In Bocca Al Lupo, or the Rookery — all within a four-block walk. For visitors trying to understand what distinguishes Juneau from other Alaska stops, Amalga is the most articulate short answer available.

Best Occasion Fit

For a first date, Amalga is the sophisticated, non-restaurant warm-up that raises the evening's stakes gently. Meet for a cocktail, order a flight to taste the range, discover whether the spruce gin opinion you both arrive with leaves the building in agreement. If the date continues, walk to dinner; if it does not, the two cocktails and an hour were well spent.

For solo dining — strictly, solo drinking — the bar stools at Amalga are among the most hospitable in Alaska. The bartenders will talk if you want to talk, pour if you want to taste, and leave you alone if you want to read. Few bars get that balance right.

For a team dinner's pre-dinner cocktail hour, Amalga is the refined opening act that downtown Juneau's other options do not provide. Start with flights and cocktails here, walk two blocks to dinner, arrive at the restaurant with the group already relaxed and talking.