“You bought bottles, we planted trees — 500,000 of them! Since we launched our partnership with Trees for the Future in 2019, we never thought we’d plant so many trees in such a short time span,” says Derek Benham, founder and managing partner of Purple Brands. “We’ll continue to grow our efforts alongside the rapid growth of our craft whiskeys,” he added. In addition to working with Trees for the Future, Purple Brands also partnered nationally with One Tree Planted to coordinate volunteer planting days during Earth Month with the company’s team and wholesale partners.
The Redwood Empire’s majestic forests stretch from San Francisco north along the coast to the Oregon border. Located in a fog belt, the cool weather conditions and low humidity in this area allow a slow, even extraction of flavor from barrels throughout the year, resulting in whiskeys of exceptional complexity, balance, and subtlety.
Founded in 2015 as part of Purple Brands, Redwood Empire Whiskey is distilling California craft whiskey.
The brand offers meticulously crafted grain-to-glass whiskeys comprised from its own distillate and complemented with sourced barrels up to 14 years old that add nuance and complexity. Each bottling is named for an iconic tree in the Redwood Empire, honoring John Muir’s profound respect for the natural world. The brand offers Lost Monarch, a blended whiskey, Pipe Dream which is a Bourbon, and a Rye whiskey called Emerald Giant. Redwood Empire Whiskey recently launched their first bottled-in-bond, a high standard for distillers, which includes Rocket Top Rye and Grizzly Beast Bourbon.
With over half a million trees planted, Redwood Empire Whiskey’s impact is impressive. This translates to restoring 125 acres of degraded farmland, more than 18,000 metric tons of CO2 sequestered (over 20 years) and paving a pathway for over 1,000 people who were heading towards hunger and poverty. When looking at the entire impact of Trees for the Future, they have been responsible for planting more than 225 million trees around the globe in the last three decades and are on track to plant one billion trees by 2030.