Written by LISA TRUESDALE Photos provided by DIETZ DISTILLERY
A TRUE TEXAS PEACH Dietz Distillery Brings Old World Distilling to the Heart of Texas
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ietz Fischer knows peaches. Growing up on his family’s peach farm in Fredericksburg, Texas, his earliest memories are from around age five, perched in the bed of a pickup truck, cruising up and down the rows of peach trees. “I can’t imagine I was lending much of a hand then,” said Dietz, a fifth-generation Texan, “but everyone certainly made me feel like I was helping.” When he was older, Dietz would help out after school at Fischer & Wieser’s Das Peach Haus, where his dad and Mark Wieser make gourmet jams, jellies, dips, sauces, salad dressings, and more — many using fresh peaches and other fruits grown right there on the family farm. Peaches in Texas? Definitely. Fredericksburg, on the western edge of Texas Hill Country, was founded by German immigrants in 1846. Around the 1920s, the settlers began planting peach trees, realizing they had the perfect combination of factors for growing the fruit successfully: limestone-rich soil, cold (but not freezing) 56
winters, hot summers, and a favorable temperature swing from day to night. There are now an estimated half-million peach trees planted statewide. From about mid-May to mid-August each year, dozens of peach varieties are available at roadside farm stands and family-run orchards; baked into famous cobblers everywhere you turn; and incorporated into entrees, desserts, and cocktails at nearly every restaurant in town.
When it was time to head to college, Dietz temporarily left all the peaches behind. He studied mechanical engineering at Texas A&M, and though he finished his degree, it wasn’t his true calling. Somewhere along the way he gained an interest in distilling, so when he wasn’t attending classes he was interning in the distilling biz and soaking up as much knowledge as possible. He spent some W W W . ARTISANSPIRITMAG . C O M