Forthave Spirits
Aaron Sing Fox and Daniel de la Nuez macerate over two hundred herbs, roots, barks and flowers in stainless steel on Flushing Avenue. They sweeten only with raw turbinado sugar or upstate honey.2
Why go
The two of them started making amari in Brooklyn home kitchens in 2012 and founded the company in 2016. Three bottles reached shelves in January 2017: the gin BLUE, the amaro MARSEILLE and the bitter RED.21 The name comes from Richard Forthave, a botanist who by legend mixed an herbal tonic against the plague.2
Upstairs they keep a vintage library of old amari, ratafia, genepi and Chartreuse. They taste their own work against it.2
The James Beard Foundation made Fox and de la Nuez semifinalists for Outstanding Wine, Spirits, or Beer Producer in 2020.3
Order this / avoid
- Order: RED. Thirteen botanicals go into it, orange and chamomile and rose among them, at 24 percent. The house pours it with soda water, with grapefruit juice, or in a Negroni.5
- Order: MARSEILLE if you want the darker one. It is 36 percent and runs on cinnamon, eucalyptus and honey. The recipe came from four medieval thieves who handed it over for clemency after robbing plague victims.4
- Order: BROWN for after dinner. It is a coffee liqueur made with Cafe Integral from a single-origin bean grown by Don Sergio Ortez in Nicaragua and roasted in Brooklyn.4
- Avoid: turning up expecting a bar. This is a production address and I haven't found published visiting hours.
What locals & experts say
- Daniel de la Nuez, to PUNCH in 2017, on the rule the house works to:
we stuck to an all-natural approach: using nothing artificial, working only with glass or stainless steel.
1 - Virginia Miller, in Distiller Magazine in November 2025, reports the botanicals are mostly certified organic, and that the ones that are not are small-farmed or wild foraged.2
- The James Beard Foundation, 2020: a semifinalist place under Outstanding Wine, Spirits, or Beer Producer, against High Wire, Leopold Bros. and Willett in the same list.3
Good to know
- The door: 630 Flushing Avenue, where South Williamsburg, Clinton Hill and Bedford-Stuyvesant meet, upstairs in a building full of food and drink producers.2
- The rest of the range: MITHRADATES, a vino amaro on naturally fermented Finger Lakes red wine and over 32 botanicals; BLACK, a nocino from foraged black walnuts; YELLOW, a genepi.4
Verdict
could-visit — Start with RED, over ice with a squeeze of lime. If the bitterness sits where you want it, work through the rest of the range in order of strength.