There are nearly 3,000 craft distilleries in America. Only a handful are women-owned. Even fewer women are certified Master Distillers—ten total in the entire country. And just two Americans have ever been inducted into the prestigious Gin Guild since its inception in 1638.
Danielle Leavell holds all three distinctions.
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Creating gin
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Mixing Gin ingredients
Danielle owns and runs Astraea Gin, an organic gin brand based in Seattle, Washington. Making terroir gins using local botanicals.
“We’re very much rooted in these wild landscapes and want to share that sense of place, take our consumers on a journey,” she says. “Meadow tastes like a flowery mountain meadow. We distill Ocean with a local seaweed so it has a high mineral salinity. Forest we source with a local balsam fir and spruce needles that creates a really lush, verdant gin.”
Astraea’s gins may invoke an ephemeral feel, but the craft of distilling “is really all science,” Danielle says—a discipline that, growing up in the Midwest in the 1980s and 90s in a culture where girls weren’t much encouraged toward sciences and gender roles were firmly rooted, Danielle never even considered that she might have an aptitude for.
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Instead, she got her start as a food and beverage photographer in restaurants, wineries, and breweries. “Being around those environments, I just felt this spark of curiosity, of belonging,” Danielle says. She started educating herself about spirits and making vermouth, bitters, and amaro at home. At the same time, she was feeding a burgeoning passion for plant and herbal science.
“I had this moment when I realized I could combine the two and make botanical spirits. I had the knowledge to work with plants in a unique way and capture them in their truest form in a bottle.”
Shortly after, Danielle was traveling in Scotland and found Heriot-Watt University’s program on brewing and distilling, one of the most well-known in the world. When she reached out, the program heads encouraged her to apply—even though, because it was a science Masters program, they mostly accepted young recent college graduates who were microbiologists, chemical engineers, and chemists… and, by default, mostly men. Danielle had two art degrees.
“But they saw something in me,” she said. “When I got in, I sold my house, got my entire life down to a ten-by-ten storage unit, and moved to Scotland at the age of thirty-nine to become a Master Distiller.”
Danielle only opened Astraea in 2021 (no small feat for a female entrepreneur in an overwhelmingly male-dominated industry where 98% of funding and investor dollars go to men), but it’s already blown the doors on distilling scene. The Global Spirits Masters Competition awarded medals to all four gins in 2023. Before that, no American company had even medaled, let alone swept an entire category. And Danielle will be installed in the Gin Guild in a formal ceremony this October, the equivalent of winning an Oscar in the spirits world.
“I’m so proud and grateful,” she says.
Gin sampling
“It’s a mark of personal journey. And that’s life, right? One thing leads you to another if you’re open to it.”
Danielle Leavell, @danielleleavell // @astraeaspirits
Danielle's Favorite Summer Negroni Recipe
1.5 oz Astraea Forest Gin
1 oz Dolin Rogue
1 oz Strawberry infused Aperol
Fill a mixing glass with ice.
Pour all ingredients into mixing glass.
Stir. Pour into glass over a rock.
Garnish with expressed orange peel.
To make Strawberry infused Aperol:
Empty bottle of Aperol into a larger vessel, add 1 lb cut strawberries with green tops. Make sure the strawberries are covered with the Aperol. Let steep for 24 hours. Strain. Return Aperol to bottle. Save strawberries for jam or something else delicious.
