Our Story
About Rhine Hall
An Austrian experience in the 70's was the seed that grew into a family and friends' dream to produce local spirits. The distillery is owned and operated by Charlie and Jenny, a father-daughter team. Our special recipe and process was developed by Charlie and Stan the Man with help from experts on both sides of the Atlantic.
Austrian Hockey to Distilling
Rheinhalle was the name of the ice rink in Austria where co-founder Charlie (pictured left) played professional hockey, and inspired the name for Rhine Hall Distillery. It was during this time in Austria that Charlie first learned to distill. His good friend, Stan the Man, visited him and equally fell in love with the tradition and culture of producing fruit distillates in this abundant fruit-growing region of Austria.
Est. 2012 in Chicago
Years later, Charlie moved his family to Germany, where they worked with the locals to learn how to make their traditional spirit, eau de vie. After returning home to Chicago, the family continued making eau de vie in their backyard. Using Charlie’s ingenuity, they built a bike-powered apple chopper to crush fruit from a nearby neighbor, which is why you see the bike wheel on our bottles to this day.
In 2012, Charlie and Jenny decided to transition the family’s passion project into a business. Rhine Hall opened its doors on November 1, 2013 with a production facility and tasting room on 2010 W. Fulton St - where it still operates today.
Our Products
At Rhine Hall, we focus on fruit brandies, a European-style brandy otherwise known as eau de vie or schnapps. We start with fresh fruit before we chop, ferment, distill, and bottle our spirits. The majority of our fruit is sourced from the Great Lakes Region, and no flavorings, sweeteners, or neutral spirits are added to any of the brandies — each bottle contains roughly 25lbs of fruit. This process gives us a product that is not sweet, but embodies the essence of the fruit in both taste and aroma.
Est. 2023
In 2022, Rhine Hall worked hard to find like-minded International partners with the same passion for eau de vie as them to sustainably produce their exotic line closer to where the fruit is grown.
In 2023, Rhine Hall relaunched their exotic line starting with the Mango Eau de Vie with sights to grow the line to many more unexpected fruits in the near future.
