The pioneer town of Cashmere in Central Washington is best known for Aplets and Cotlets, but there's much more to explore including new wine-tasting rooms, a distillery and an old-fashioned cider mill.

Stroll along the streets in the Central Washington town of Cashmere, and it won't be long before you pick up the scent of sugar and fruit coming from the kitchens of Liberty Orchards, a storefront factory known for jellied confections called Aplets and Cotlets.

That is, unless you wander instead into the Mission District, and poke around inside an old fruit-packing warehouse. There you might catch a whiff of corn whiskey or roasted coffee while shopping for vintage salt and pepper shakers and sampling local wines.

Tucked away along the Wenatchee River off a busy highway just east of the Bavarian -themed town of Leavenworth, Cashmere combines a bit of Mayberry — "The "Andy Griffith Show's" neat-as-a-pin slice of small-town Americana — with a sprinkling of retro cool.

New wine bars and cafes share the town with family-owned bakeries, a hardware store and a 99-year-old pharmacy, the kinds of businesses replaced by big-box stores in other communities.

"Everyone spends about a day to a day-and-a-half in Leavenworth, and then they ask themselves, 'What else is there to do?,' " said Christy Pease, owner of Junkyard Gypsy's 2nd Hand Bargain Oasis, a Mission District shop filled with vintage furniture and collectibles. "So Cashmere is starting to grow."

At the distillery and tasting room It's Five O'Clock Somewhere, Colin Levi and his partner, Eric Lunstrum, offer samples of their Block & Tackle moonshine, a corn whiskey they make in a German copper still from corn grown in Quincy. For fall, the pair plan to make brandies distilled from local cherries and Yakima grapes.

CASHMERE — Ever grumble about the lack of a distillery amid our region’s many wineries? Well, put a cork in it.

Owners of It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere, North Central Washington’s first commercial distillery since (maybe) Prohibition’s backroom bottlers, have fired up the ol’ still — right here in downtown — to produce a handmade Chilean-style brandy as their new company’s first spirited offering.

Distilled from local wines, the briefly aged, honey-hued potable kicks off a future line of liquors that will include pear brandy and pure corn moonshine, both due in six weeks. A variety of additional brandies, whiskeys and other liquors are already in the pipeline and will be available to customers over the next two years.

“That’s the beauty of being an artisan craft distillery,” said owner Colin Levi. “We’re not bound to producing the same product day in and day out. Instead, we’re committed to unique, interesting liquors that are handmade from local ingredients. The big companies don’t do it that way.”

From their 8,000-square-foot facility in a former fruit warehouse, Levi and co-distiller Eric Lunstrum have distilled, blended, filtered, bottled, labeled, packaged and sold scores of cases of their initial batch of brandy. Most of the bottles were sold in their on-site tasting room, but Lunstrum said a growing list of local bars and restaurants have committed to including the brandy on their liquor lists.

In May of 2010 Colin Levi, owner of Cashmere’s only distillery, It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere, ordered an Aromat IV copper pot still from Müller Brennereianlagen GmbH.

The decision to purchase this particular still was driven by the fact that there is an abundance of fruit within the State that when utilized properly will make some fantastic and unique distillates. This particular still was chosen because it is specifically designed to retain the aromas and flavors of the product being distilled. The pot, hat, and deflegmator are all made of copper that is hand-hammered. The cooling condenser and waterbath is all stainless steel.

It took 6 months to build and 2 months to be delivered. The still was fired up for the first time on Saturday January 15, 2011. The results were excellent. 60 gallons of pear mash was pumped into the still and 2 hours later 13 gallons of pear brandy was aging in a stainless steel tank. The still is equipped with a clean-in-place system which utilizes boiling water to clean the entire inside of the still. It takes less than 30 seconds for 60 gallons of spent mash to be evacuated from the inside of the pot. The evacuation takes place via a large pump mounted on the still. This process would have taken 9 hours with the original still that was installed at the distillery’s opening in December 2009.

Come and take look at the new still and sample our Chilean style Brandy, Block & Tackle Moonshine and Block & Tackle Sunshine. Both the Block & Tackle products are corn whiskey made with 100% Quincy corn. We will be open at 1:00 pm on Saturday and tasting as always is free.

Liquor is recession proof and it’s profitable, said artisan distiller Colin Levi. Those are two of the reasons he chose to open the new craft distillery, It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere, in Cashmere.

He also hopes to get in on the ground floor, ride the craft distillery growth wave, and beat the competition to the top. So far, he’s achieved some success, but when dealing with such a highly regulated industry, it takes time and perseverance to get things done, he said.

Washington state passed a bill in 2008 creating the artisan distillery license, which allows a craft distillery to produce up to 20,000 gallons of its own spirits per year. The distillery may sell its product directly to customers at the licensed premises (for off-premises consumption), and provide samples. In addition, the craft distillery must ensure that at least 50 percent of all raw materials are produced in Washington state. So far, only fourteen distilleries have sprung up statewide. Levi said he looked hard at the numbers before choosing liquor over the comparably easier product of wine.

“There’s about 600 wineries here, and only 14 craft distilleries. It’s probably easier to make wine, but there’s too much competition,” Levi said. “I really felt like I had to choose the right thing in this economy or it would be disastrous.”

He said more distillery competition will probably follow, but he doesn’t foresee the same amount of competitors as there are in the wine industry.

“I’m sure a lot of people will jump on the band wagon, but I don’t see 600 craft distilleries springing up. There are only 300 distillers in America. It’s a totally different process from wine and many don’t want to deal with the tighter regulations,” Levi said.