Our Timeline

Põhjaka Glögi (once again) wins the Best Christmas Drinks test from Oma Maitse for the Best Alcoholic Mulled Wine.

While looking for a new building, the opportunity arose to take over the business and its line of respected spirits. We couldn't resist.

We partnered with Bemakers to make our spirits available to consumers, retailers, and distributors in select countries.

VON EST Sangaste Rye earned the highest score of any organic vodka at the London Spirits Competition 2023.

VON EST vodkas both earned a Top Ten place at the Berlin Craft Spirits Award 2023 by points. A pretty amazing result.

We now offer an organic gin, handcrafted in small batches using our own spirit (a rarity nowadays) and regional flavours.

We share the Estonian Pavilion stand with other local producers at BIOFACH, the world's leading trade fair for organic food, in Nürnberg, Germany.

"VON Allikas", which uses our organic wheat vodka as the spirit base, was awarded The Best Estonian Cocktail 2022 at the annual Estonian Drinks Festival. It was crafted by by Henri Jürgenstein, who is responsible for our signature cocktails.

VON EST Sangaste Rye Estonian Vodka won Silver in the Vodka category at the Best Estonian Drinks 2022 competition, organised by the Estonian Sommelier Association (ESA).

Our Wheat Vodka was awarded Gold and our Rye Vodka won Silver at The Spirits Masters Global Vodka Masters 2022 competition.

We are now one of the very few distilleries who have been awarded the "Estonian Vodka" EU Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status for their vodka.

Released ahead of the festive season, VON EST Gingerbread Organic Craft Gin Liqueur brings a familiar smell and taste, along with a welcome warmth.

It was nice to see a number of cases of VON EST Wheat Vodka exported to India and promoted locally by Enterprise Estonia. Small beginnings to larger plans.

We were proud to win 3rd Place in Estonia's Best Organic Drink 2021 competition for our VON EST Wheat Vodka.

After a long time perfecting the production process, we finally released the first batch of VON EST Wheat Vodka — handcrafted, small batch, and organic.

To produce honest and traditional craft spirits then, as well as making them by hand in small batches, it should also be organic. We have been awarded organic certification for all our products.

A hundred years after our old distillery was nationalised and collectivised, we obtained all the required licenses and are now allowed to produce our handcrafted heritage spirits.

Five hundred years after our manor was first mentioned, we delivered on our new distillery project – premises leased, facilities upgraded, equipment purchased, more training, and lots of paperwork.

We spent time hands-on training with iStill in the Netherlands – using modern hybrid stills.

We trademarked VON EST to protect the brand we will use for our range of handcrafted spirits from Estonia.

We named our company Manor Spirits OÜ to reflect our heritage and the handcrafted spirits we will produce and sell.

Estonian Vodka was awarded the status of Protected Geographical Indication. It is strictly limited to vodka produced here, using traditional raw materials (grain or potato) grown in Estonia and Estonian water.

We produced our old distillery restoration project and received Heritage Protection Department approval. The plan is to use income from the sale of spirits to restore our manor, similar to the way the barons once grew it.

We spent time hands-on training at the Koval Distillery in Chicago – the first licensed to operate in the city since prohibition – using Kothe traditional German copper stills.

When Estonia regained its independence, only two distilleries were still active – both close to our old one.

The Production Association 'Liviko' was established in 1971, incorporating all the distilleries of the republic.

In the 1950s, as a result of a Communist empire policy reversal, it was decided to close our old distillery.

At this time our Master Distiller was Otto Ambrosius.

During World War II, 58 distilleries were destroyed in Estonia. Their reconstruction started in 1945.

The Guinness Book of World Records listed the 98% Eesti Piiritus (Estonian Spirit), produced from potatoes between World Wars, as being the strongest and purest. Since 1st January 1981, the strength of alcohol has been expressed as volume percentage at 20° C.

A new period in Estonian alcohol production started due to the emergence of the Union of Potato Growers Associations, which signed a government contract for alcohol production. The union acted as a collective for expropriated distilleries. This included ours, which operated under the local Võhmuta Potato Association.

The newly independent Estonian State carried out radical land reform and expropriated almost all landed property, which mostly belonged to the Baltic German nobility, including our manor.

Võhmuta manor’s last baron, Ernst Georg Zoege von Manteuffel, escapes unrest and moves to Germany with his family.

Our old distillery was significantly expanded. A second production floor and outbuilding were added, along with the installation of modern equipment. The project for the reconstruction was made by Kotovin, an engineer of the Estonian Provincial Government, who was responsible for many manor distillery designs.

Until 1885, vodka was only sold to be taken from taverns in 12.3 litre buckets, at 50% ABV. Today we can supply our spirits in smaller bottles, and at lower strengths.

During the ownership of the Baron Peter Zoege von Manteuffel, rebuilding an earlier distillery of ours starts. Manor spirits were produced from both grain and potato.

In 1871, most of our vodka was sold to the Mayer department store in Tallinn – 784 (12.3 litre) buckets in January, 710 buckets in February, 989 buckets in March, 852 buckets in April, and 831 buckets in June.

The introduction of excise duty on alcohol in 1863 led to a shift to artisanal industrial distilling. Taxes encouraged the use of potatoes, which by the end of the century had displaced rye as the main raw material for alcohol, as well as a shift to modern machinery of German origin.

A manor pledge agreement from 1861 recorded that the spirits produced at our old distillery were mostly sold in Estonia’s capital city (Tallinn) and at Kunda harbour.

98% anhydrous spirit was first made in Raadi Manor, Estonia.

Documents show the baron owner, Georg Hermann von Baumgarten, promise to fulfill his obligation to the state regarding the production of spirits at our manor.

Tartu University in Estonia announced inventing a complete distillation of spirit in 1801.

At the end of the 18th Century there were 731 distilleries in Estonia, producing 680,000 buckets of 50% ABV vodka annually.

The wealth derived from vodka laid the foundation for the creation of magnificent manor houses. Distilling became one of the most important parts of the manor economy due to the Russian market opening in 1766.

In 1765 Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, granted Baltic-German nobles a monopoly on production. This allowed their manors to grow, as most created a distillery to make small batch craft spirits, including ours.

Reval (Tallinn) barbers obtained a licence to produce and sell spirits from King Charles XI of Sweden in 1669.

A Reval (Tallinn) pharmacist, Wolfgang Holzwirt, was granted permission to sell alcohol by the Magistrate in 1550.

The first recorded mention of Võhmuta (Wechmuth) manor, then known as Wemes or Wämes, was in 1519. This is the manor where our old distillery was later established.

Distilling spirits has taken place in Estonia since 1485, when it was recorded that only members of the Great Guild of wine producers, merchants, and their widows had the right to produce alcohol for sale.

Gerardus (Gert) Soye came to Estonia in 1325 as Viennese vassal of Christoph II, King of Denmark. He was the first generation of the Zoege von Manteuffel family of barons that would later come to own our manor, as well as expand and operate our distillery.