Spirit of Moanalua [Honolulu Star-Advertiser (HI)]

BRUCE ASATO / BASATO@STARADVERTISER.COM

Rosalind Mattos holds a picture of her grandfather, Roy Bradley, who was a Marine around the time of World War I. She and husband Manny are holding jugs of okolehao brewed by Bradley and now in the possession of J.P. Damon, standing. They were photographed at Damon's Moanalua Gardens, the area where Bradley distilled his liquor.

BRUCE ASATO / BASATO@STARADVERTISER.COM

A close-up of a jug of okolehao.

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Beneath the spreading green canopies of Moanalua Gardens, J.P. Damon and Manny and Rosalind Mattos are cradling 1-gallon glass jugs that contain a sloshing brown fluid. The stuff within is precious and rare.

It's okolehao, the alcoholic beverage unique to Hawaii. And not just any okolehao. This okolehao is high-grade stuff, a cognac-level whiskey that has survived because, basically, it's too good to drink.

Like much of the mythology about okolehao, how and why it was created is a mystery, and how and why Damon and the Mattoses joined forces is something of a magical coincidence as well.

"This okolehao made by Roy Bradley is a world-class whiskey," said Damon, whose family is tightly connected to the Moanalua area. "I became interested in it from stories I'd heard over the years, and when we inherited one of our older houses, it had some bottles carefully stashed in it. The man who created it was this fellow Roy Bradley, right here in Moanalua."

A couple of years ago, Damon met the Mattoses at the Prince Lot Hula Festival held at the gardens. Rosalind had grown up at Moanalua Gardens, and they chatted about the Hawaiian families who had been homesteading the land there since the 1600s. Damon is a descendant of banker and royal finance minister Samuel Mills Damon, who received the Moanalua ahupuaa from Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop.

He asked the couple whether they'd ever heard of Roy Bradley, the mastermind behind some of the finest okolehao ever distilled.

Rosalind told him that was her grandfather's name. She didn't remember her grandfather ever actually working at a still - by that time he was retired and spent his days having a sip or two in the gardens. They compared notes and discovered this person was the same Roy Bradley. A maker of Hawaiian weapons, Manny Mattos got interested in the genealogy and began investigating Bradley's history.

Although they have a picture of Bradley in a Marine Corps uniform, they're not sure whether he originally came from Canada or the American Northeast. Soon after mustering out from the first World War, Bradley came to the islands and married into a Hawaiian family. One thing for sure: He brought highly professional distilling skills with him.

"He had the distilling plant right across the stream, on the mauka side, and the kids weren't allowed to go there," said Manny Mattos. "He came up with a formula, a recipe that made super-brew okolehao. A kind of Canadian whiskey. He used ti roots, crushed pineapple and yeast. How much of each? No one knows. The recipe is gone and no one thought to ask. And he used special ti root, ti plants from the mountainside, hard-to-get roots."

Mattos also pointed out that the Bradley home and distillery were located at natural artesian springs, and the mountain-percolated pure water might have played a factor as well.

"Samuel Mills Damon, the year of his death (1924), had a thousand gallons made for him," said Damon. "At his funeral, everyone was given a gallon. I heard stories all my life of people at the funeral being carried back to their limousines because they started sipping it at the ceremony."

DAMON, who has "more than one and waaaaay less than a thousand bottles of the stuff," describes Bradley's concoction as a "very refined, high-end cognac, barreled in oak, which gives a woody flavor and color. It's about 120 proof. It's hard to find any whiskey more than 30 years old, and Roy Bradley's okolehao dates back to the 1920s."

Yes, the 1920s. Prohibition years. It doesn't seem to have put a crimp into Bradley's production, despite the local sheriff, a character known as "Two-Gun Mokumiya," living nearby.

"And I know that an American vice president - no names, please - sampled a lot of Bradley's okolehao, and that John Wayne and Burgess Meredith, here filming 'In Harm's Way,' were pretty fond of the stuff," said Damon.

The remaining jugs of Bradley's okolehao are treasured and saved for special occasions. There are likely families all over the islands who might have some stashed away, said Damon.

"After 50 years of adulthood whiskey-tasting, I can vouch that this okolehao is remarkably consistent in flavor," he said. "That says a lot about Bradley's skill in distilling it. As a rare whiskey, a jug of this could easily cost more than $1,000 - if it were for sale.

"Can it be duplicated? That's the great dilemma. The family had the recipe; now it's gone."

According to Manny Mattos, "Hawaiians can be pretty discreet about these things."

Damon said, "This stuff is so good that whiskey manufacturers are interested in duplicating it, and they can have samples chemically broken down. But that doesn't tell you anything about the barreling and distillation process. No one thought to ask and Bradley didn't share. It's a lost art."

Bradley didn't spend all his time distilling. He had 10 children and dozens of grandchildren. Rosalind Mattos said she couldn't bring herself to simply slurp down a shot of her grandfather's okolehao. Instead, she dipped a finger in it and tasted, and a warm buzz spread through her body.

"It was a link to something special that he had made, so long ago. It was like he was talking to me, across the years," she said.

Credit: Burl Burlingame