Artisan spirits and the people who eat ramen noodles to create them.

Posted on July 19, 2008
Filed Under Kevin Kelpe |

Kevin Kelpe is a bartender, restaurateur and amateur writer living in Boise, Idaho. He blogs at Save the Drinkers.

Wi-Fi in the Monteleone is… well, crappy. And so, what you’re about to experience took two days to get up. No, no, no… it’s not my ex. It’s my thoughts on Allison Evanow’s session on Artisan Spirits that took place on Thursday afternoon. This session was very informative for spirit makers, but also very important for us small-beans media. We need to support our artisan distillers!

As far as craft distillers are concerned, Lance Winters is like… my new boyfriend or something. I’m just saying, jeez! And although he was really busy after the Artisan Spirits session, I was very pleased to catch him after the Aroma Thing this afternoon so that we could catch up and chat about all things distilling; you know, just me pickin’ his brain… (s)talking.

“Every region in the world has its own local flavor…. Have what they’re making so you can truly ingest their culture.”

A lot of great things have been said to me immediately before I truly take up my arms and stalk a man. But when Lance made this comment about regional styles and building a local following for your products, I saw a unique opportunity. The obvious and extremely creepy opportunity, and then an opportunity to plug MxMo August, hosted at SaveTheDrinkers.com! The MxMo August theme is Local Flavor, and Lance’s immortal words are that theme’s new slogan.

The conversation between this panel and the attendees was one that I think we need to address on a mass-media level. Here are the basic points of the panel and of my conversations with Lance Winters and Allison Evanow, (Hot Chick and founder of Square One Organic Vodka.)

1. Craft distillers, artisan spirit makers, and distributors focused on interesting products with integrity need a vehicle for cultivating the right operators for their products, and in turn serving those products to the right end-user.
2. As craft cocktail makers, we are not trying to serve great drinks to people who do not want them. We’re not trying to feed pearls to pigs, (as our dear Lord Jesus may have said,) but looking for our exact market instead. We want to build a program to cultivate a kind of buyer that loves that program, helps the program build popularity, and then helps build the overall awareness of the drinking public.
3. Concordantly, artisan spirit makers should be looking for the bars and bar concepts and bartenders with an equally yoked vision. They shouldn’t try to sell pearls of beautiful small batch gin to bartending pigs who are only interested in slinging citrus-flavored beet sugar evaporate mixed with energy drink from the gun.
4. Good instructions for surviving in the distilling world: Build a local following for your great product, be the best, live simply until you can sell a few cases, and try to market directly with the operating public and through the craft-oriented media, (like quality-oriented bloggers,) and hopefully the rest will happen organically and the integrity of your process will match the integrity of your product.

There were other questions addressed like the popularity of organics and the implications of the locavore movement, but the general point of the panel was to discuss ways to establish a foothold for the artisan spirit makers in the general public’s drinking habits.

With all of that said, I’d like to take this chance to tell the limited public that might actually read this post about the businesses represented on this panel: Square One Organic Vodka, St. George Spirits, and Haus-Alpenz. (By “tell”, I mean “provide links so you can do it yourself.”) These are people we need to get behind because they’re doing the right thing. If you’re an operator, get a hold of these great distillers and find a way to use their products. (Vodka schmodka, you can find a way to use it, you turd.) You’ll be pleased to make something besides an Ultimate Cadillac Grapejito Whatever, and they’ll be glad to have one more account closer to getting their kids through college.