MOST PORTLAND DISTILLERS I've interviewed have a slightly crazed look in their eyes, as if the fumes from distillates, lack of sleep, and sampling their own product has jarred something loose in their brains. Not anything important, mind you, just something that makes them a bit off.

Steve McCarthy, on the other hand, seems completely sane, with the eyes of a kind skeptic. At 65, he is head of Clear Creek Distillery, the oldest small-batch booze operation in Oregon. He's a tower of a man, with a face framed in close-cropped gray hair. Though large in stature, it's McCarthy's reputation that casts a shadow over the scrappy micro-distillation community; the start-ups speak his name with respect, and they never fail to give him credit for being the first.

Since purchasing his first German still in 1984, McCarthy has cultivated an impressive catalogue of eau de vies, grappas, and liqueurs, as well as an astounding whiskey. He builds them from scratch, from locally sourced fruit, with an eye to spreading the bounty globally. As his European-inspired products hit European shores, it's hard to imagine that it all started on a pear orchard in the Hood River Valley, owned by the McCarthy family for a century.

"To be totally accurate," McCarthy says, "our fruit-growing business has had its ups and downs during that 100 years. And that's one of the reasons I started this distillery."

On regular European journeys that began in 1960, McCarthy became fascinated by what the continent had discovered about local foodways. "You've got to take whatever you've got in your agriculture community and make it into something special," which McCarthy notes the Europeans have mastered.

McCarthy was impressed at how Europ-ean artisanal products of all types were marketed. By comparison, Oregon pear growers were amateurs. "It was bullshit," says McCarthy. "Their idea of marketing pears was to go to Safeway and beg them to buy."

Then, McCarthy had his "oh shit" moment. A friend told him that the pear eau de vie he'd been enjoying in Europe, unavailable in the US at the time, was made from the European equivalent of American Bartletts.

"We had piles of Bartletts we couldn't give away," McCarthy remembers. "So I thought, 'Ha! I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to make good pear brandy so that I can get it. I'm going to figure out a better market for our fruit.'" He explains that he felt his plan might even affect land-use planning, giving farmers a healthy agricultural market that would help keep them paid and their land safe from developers.

The problem was how to get started. Beginning before the invention of the internet, McCarthy plunged into research and racked up air miles. His first still arrived in the US a broken mess; his second arrived dissembled, without an operating manual. After piecing it together—a process that included trouble shooting by faxing Polaroids to the German manufacturer—he was up and running. Today, he uses an estimated 1,000,000 pounds of Oregon fruit in a process that produces a low-yield, high-flavor, low-proof product. Which is exactly what he wants.

"Our mindset is more like a wine maker," McCarthy explains. "We say, 'What grows [in Oregon]... that can be fermented or distilled into an eau de vie?'"

While not completely dismissive of cocktails, McCarthy believes that his spirits are best enjoyed on their own. Though it pains the avid cocktailian, he may be right. His barrel-aged, apple eau de vie has a lovely smoky flavor with the demeanor of baked pomme. Served frozen in a sherry glass, his flagship pear eau de vie tastes like a bracing morning in a cold orchard where a few pears have gone to ground. But perhaps his triumph is the eau de vie of Douglas fir; 10 years of experimentation led to this shimmering green alcohol that tastes exactly like an autumn afternoon in the woods. Drinking it is like tasting the scent of an evergreen forest, frosted with a hint of sweetness.

Other products are just as enlightening: His three-year McCarthy whiskey is full smoke with a hint of peat, so smooth as to be devastatingly drinkable, and his grappas made from the pomace, or grape remains, of local wineries have a lovely sense of terroir, the wine subtly creeping around the palate.

If there is any criticism of McCarthy and Clear Creek Distillery, it's that he seems to set himself apart from the larger Oregon small-batch booze community; almost looking askance at the smaller, wild-eyed distillers who give him so much respect. Granted, he's not in the same league by any stretch of the imagination, but he doesn't seem to acknowledge that many "vodka and gin guys" are using filtered/flavored vodkas and gins to build capital and someday realize the craft dream that McCarthy has found.

If it weren't for McCarthy there would likely be less Portland distillers today and we'd all be stuck drinking crappy booze.