Our story
Two travelers, one small distillery.
We're two travelers — one from North Macedonia, the other from the USA — and we founded Roots & Routes together. We met in Freetown, Sierra Leone, but we've been all over. Our main objective with Roots & Routes is simple: to share some of our favorite memories from some of our favorite places through the drink we've put in your bottle.
Home distilling started as a way of experimenting with some of the amazing ingredients we encountered over the years and keeping the bar full in the process. A small pot still on a kitchen counter, a notebook of recipes, whatever fruit was ripe. Over the years it grew into a serious hobby — we ferment, distil and taste constantly, and we're never not experimenting with a recipe.
Most batches are tiny and most of them never leave the kitchen. That's the point. We change one ratio, swap a botanical for another, rest something for a month and taste it again. Some ideas stick, most don't, and the ones that do are the ones we want to drink ourselves.
In 2026 we finally made it official. Roots & Routes sits on the edge of Kavadarci, surrounded by orchards and a few old vineyards — close enough to the fruit, far enough from the noise. Everything we learned from years of kitchen-table distilling goes into these bottles.
Why Kavadarci
The Tikveš valley has been growing fruit and making rakija for centuries. The soil, the sun, the lake — there are reasons whole regions are known for their flavours.
Why this scale
Small batches let us taste every run, change a recipe on a Tuesday, and put one person's name on a bottle. We never want to be bigger than we can taste.
Philosophy
Tradition is a starting line,
not a finish.
We respect the old recipes, but we believe they're best left to the old masters. To us, tradition doesn't mean doing exactly what was done before — it means doing it with the same care.
So we experiment... Sometimes gently, sometimes boldly. A pinch of cardamom in a juniper-forward gin. Coconut and chilli in a gin that tastes like the Freetown coast. A few months of rest in glass instead of oak. Some things stick. Most don't. The bottles that make it out of the door are the ones we want to drink ourselves.
"A distillery where local Macedonian traditions meet ideas gathered from around the world."
The land
Why Macedonia?
270
Days of sun a year in the Tikveš valley
6
Distinct microclimates within an hour's drive
2,000+
Years of unbroken wine and spirit-making history