LONG BEACH, Calif. – “Grain to glass” distilling is a science and no one knows that better than Simon Haxton who is a rocket scientist by day when he is not making the spirits at Portuguese Bend, Long Beach’s first and only distillery.

“We all live in Long Beach so we wanted to bring something special to the area,” says Haxton.

He is making a Negroni - an Old Fashioned made with gin instead of whiskey. The spirits are all his recipes, and the distillery/restaurant combo is the first of its kind in the state.

Distilling is a continuation of the brewing process and fittingly with microbreweries saturating the market. Simon and his partners saw a chance to take everything a step further.

“About five years ago we looked at what other projects, what other concepts might work and a distillery came to mind simply because nobody’s really doing it, the laws were changing here in California to make it a little bit easier to start out. You can have a restaurant on premise now, so it looked like it was the perfect time for a project like this,” Haxton says.

He shovels the stillage, which is grain stripped of alcohol. The distillery is essentially zero waste, the stillage will be used by a farmer somewhere in SoCal.

It is the attention to the local ties that really separates Portuguese Bend. The name and decor both pay homage to history. The distillery is named after a cove north of Palos Verdes used as a smuggling point during prohibition.

“We thought that that was a really great point of entry for us to showcase Long Beach. I don’t think a lot of people know that story, and it’s also a way to help us secure the brand as a geographically local location. So it just seemed like it was the perfect combination for us. Plus I’m Portuguese some of my family came from the island of Madeira. So having that connection made it kind of a no brained to use that connection for the name,” Haxton says.

As the bottles keep pouring out, Haxton and his crew are bringing back to Long Beach what the prohibition era once took away. They are doing it with the hope that they further put Long Beach on the map, just like Portuguese Bend once did for those smugglers during prohibition.

The final product a work of art - mixed with a little bit of rocket science.