Like many young women, Rachael Petach first experienced currant berries in France, when she tasted the classic Kir Royale Champagne cocktail. Even though she was only 19 at the time, she remembers being impressed by how the sweet, currant-based Crème de Cassis liqueur “transformed the taste of the Champagne.” Years later, while living in Spain, she tasted actual currant berries, and was “taken aback: so dynamic, so much flavor, so not sweet.”
Fast forward, and Petach is living in New York, working in boutique hospitality, and indulging a passion for cooking. She wants to create a product of her own, and decides to experiment with making an all-American cassis liqueur, one with more depth, one that does honor to the taste of those amazing berries—which had been banned from American farms in the 1900s. The currants, it was discovered, were carrying a fungus that killed the white pine trees used extensively in building. The federal ban was lifted in the 1960s, but in most states growing currants continued to be illegal.
New York state ended its ban in 2003—and botanist Greg Quinn immediately began growing currants on a farm in Staatsburg. As Petach was experimenting with her cassis aperitif, she connected with Quinn, and began using him as a source and resource.
By 2020, she had perfected her recipe, and it was selling briskly enough that she needed a larger workspace. She and her husband, graphic designer Steve Quested, moved with their young child to upstate New York, and in 2022 built a distillery on a farm in Rhinebeck.
Their aperitif is called C Cassis, with logo and graphics created by Petach and Quested. Quinn’s currants form the base, which is then layered with wild honey from Clermont beekeeper Ray Tousey, and a hybrid rosé from Hudson Chatham Wine. There are also botanicals such as citrus, verbena, and bay “to add bite,” Petach explains.
C Cassis now sells 8,000 bottles a year (about $28 for a 375mL bottle) in New York and 18 other states. Petach and Quested have added a small tasting room next to the distillery; it’s open on weekends in spring, summer, and fall.
When you arrive at the tasting room, it feels as though you’ve stumbled upon a café in the south of France. The decor is both understated and fabulous; it feels languorous and sun baked.
Friendly servers pour out tastings of the company’s rich, sweet cassis elixirs. There are snacks (roasted squash with shiso dressing; medicinal mushroom broth). A loaf of gorgeous, dark wheat bread studded with currants sits on a wooden cutting board beside a small mountain of homemade butter. There are snappy and exciting currant crackers with sea salt. All the baked goods come deliciously from Mel the Bakery in Hudson.
The tasting room is open Saturday and Sunday, noon to 6 p.m. Petach also has a no-alcohol cassis.—ccassis.com
By Cynthia Hochswender
Photos by Cole Wilson and Winona Barton