In Austria’s Tyrol Mountains, Schnapps Has Its Own Identity

In the U.S., schnapps often serves as a reminder of parties we’d rather forget. But in the Tyrol mountains of western Austria, schnapps is more than a drink—it’s a thriving cultural tradition, a way for local farmers and distillers to proudly embrace their Alpine heritage. It’s served on festive occasions, after a good meal, or brought in a flask to enjoy after a rigorous hike in the mountains.

So what exactly is schnapps? It can be hard to define, meaning different things in different countries. In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, it’s loosely used to describe any strong spirit, though usually referring to an unaged, fruit-based brandy enjoyed straight after a meal as a digestif. Whereas in the U.S., products sold as schnapps are usually lower proof, grain-based, fruit-flavored liqueurs. These sticky-sweet versions are commonly seen at ski resorts (where peppermint or cinnamon schnapps bolster hot drinks like cocoa or cider), or served as shots in college bars across the country.

In Scandinavia, order schnapps and you’ll likely be served aquavit, traditionally flavored with caraway and dill. In Park City, Utah, the Stein Eriksen Lodge—named after the Norwegian skier and Olympic gold medalist—uses aquavit from the local Alpine Distilling in their signature winter drink, Stein’s Norwegian Toddy. “We don’t get as many requests for schnapps as in the past, but our European travelers, especially German-speaking ones, still occasionally ask for a shot of schnapps,” says Jason Barrett, food and beverage director.

But to fully understand schnapps in its classic form, you need to visit its home base in the Tyrol mountains of Austria, where winters are long and the growing season is cruelly short. For centuries, farmers here learned to waste nothing—every apple or pear that fell, every apricot that ripened found its purpose. When harvests blessed the land with more fruit than could be eaten fresh or stored through the winter, necessity became the mother of invention. The result was schnapps—a way to capture summer in a bottle for the dark months ahead.

Today, the Tyrol mountains are home to more schnapps distilleries (around 4,000) per capita than any other region in the world. A 15-minute drive from Innsbruck, Draxl Schnapps Distillery sits on land that’s been in the family since 1972. It originally operated as a dairy farm, but in 1991 the cows were sold and replaced with apple trees. Like many other local farmers, Lambert Draxl had long been making schnapps as a hobby to use up the apples, and the shift enabled him to begin distilling on a professional level.

Though the estate still has 10,000 apple trees, his son, Hubert Draxl, has increasingly focused the family business on distilling spirits. He acknowledges the term schnapps is a challenge. Americans think of cheap, sweet, syrupy liqueurs, and Europeans sometimes associate the term with excessive drinking. Though Draxl’s spirits fall under the umbrella term of schnapps, Hubert Draxl prefers to differentiate his product by calling it edelbrand, which he says is the highest quality fruit brandy.

“Under the law in Austria, schnapps can be just one third fruit, and two thirds made up of another alcohol. But edelbrand is the purest essence of the fruit, pure fruit fermentation with nothing else added, no additional sugar or alcohol. We smash the apples, let it ferment for two to three weeks and then we distill it,” says Hubert Draxl.

Draxl only sells its spirits within Germany and Austria. About half their fruit brandies are sold directly through their tasting room, which gets visitors on a daily basis from a variety of European countries. Tastings are offered with charcuterie platters and can be enjoyed at Draxl’s modern yet cozy wood-paneled tasting room with its tall copper distilling kettles and large windows framing the vista of the Alps.

Hubert Draxl’s top sellers are the various apple schnapps made using six varieties of fruit from his own trees. Pear schnapps is another big seller, but he also sells dozens of other fruit brandies, including raspberry, plum, cherry and a beloved local favorite called zirbe, made from pine. One of Draxl’s rarer schnapps varieties comes from the rowanberry, a tiny bitter red berry with an almond flavor found on Alpine mountain ash trees. “It’s very labor intensive,” says Draxl. “It takes 100 kilos of rowanberries just to make two-and-a-half liters of schnapps.”

Nearby, the family-run Rochelt Distillery, known for its distinctive handblown green glass bottles, is one of the only schnapps distillers in Tyrol that sells in the U.S. A bottle of their schnapps can cost upward of $300. It’s a worthy indulgence in the opinion of Hannes Spiegel, head of food and beverage at Innsbruck’s Adlers Hotel, known for its rooftop bar with panoramic views of the Alps. “Alexander Rainer [the son-in-law of distillery founder Günter Rochelt] is one of only about a dozen master distillers of edelbrand,” says Spiegel. He compares what’s going on now with schnapps distillers to the farm-to-table movement, with an emphasis on quality and what he calls “truth in the glass.”

While Austria is the country best known for its tradition of schnapps, it’s also beloved in parts of Germany. “Schnapps is a big part of our culinary culture—it simply belongs to a good meal in Germany. And while overall consumption has declined, expectations for quality have risen,” says Alexander Herrmann, a German TV personality and chef of the Michelin-starred Aura, in the Bavarian town of Wirsberg.

“Fruit brandies are the most popular in my view, due to their beguiling aroma,” says Herrmann. “Classics like Williams pear are personally unbeatable. Cherry is also wonderful—less fruity, with fine hints of marzipan.” Known for his hyper-local menu, Herrmann sources schnapps from small regional distillers like the Haas Distillery in Pretzfeld, Bavaria, where the family has been making fruit schnapps since 1901. Just as at Innsbruck restaurants like the legendary Weisses Rössl, where they serve traditional Tyrolean delicacies like schnitzel with spätzle noodles, a good meal in German-speaking mountain towns often ends with the offer of a schnapps.

As Spiegel takes in the view of Innsbruck and the surrounding Alps from his perch in the rooftop bar at the Adlers Hotel, he credits local distillers for their commitment to preserving alpine heritage. “This isn’t a job, it’s a passion. It’s about continuing a cultural tradition.”