NEW
SPIRITS
Oregon's
microdistilleries lead the market.
by
Melissa Bearns
First it was wine, as Oregon winemakers gained fame
and notoriety for their fabulous pinot noirs. The explosion of high
quality, handcrafted grape-y goodness from California and the Northwest
reshaped the industry and, at the same time, educated the public.
Quality wines became the norm, replacing the two or three bland brands
that had once dominated the market. Consumers learned the difference
between a light, fruity Beaujolais and a complex, rich cabernet. The
national vocabulary expanded to include words and phrases like hints
of oak, spicy reds and tannins.
 |
| Marché's
James West mixes a cocktail with Oregon-distilled Medoyeff vodka.
|
Then it was beer. Oregon's microbreweries gained a
reputation nationwide for producing some of the tastiest porters and
ales money could buy. Consumers learned about hops and the differences
between a hefeweizen and an ale. Beer terminology became general knowledge
and people in New York, Chicago and L.A. now drink Oregon brews.
Today, Oregonians are once again leading the newest
trend in booze as products from our 10 or so small-batch distilleries
gain national attention and recognition. You can read about Oregon
gin, vodka and eau de vie in Gourmet, The New York Times
Magazine, GQ, Men's Journal, Food & Wine,
The Wall Street Journal and Bon Apétit, to name
a few.
According to Bill Owens, founder and president of
the American Distilling Institute, about 72 microdistillers are operating
in the U.S. Ten of those are in Oregon. Only California, with 12,
has more operating small distilleries than Oregon. Michigan has 10.
Part of the reason we're seeing so many local, small-batch
distilleries popping up around the state is because it's those same
folks, the people who've been working for decades with beer and wine,
who are now trying their hands at distilling. "I see it as a natural
evolution of both the wine and beer industries," said Ty Reeder, distiller
for McMenamins. "With such large numbers of people working [with beer
and wine], you're bound to have people looking for the next step."
They
Call Him Yoda
While most of Oregon's microdistilleries have only
been in operation for a few years, Steve McCarthy of Clear Creek Distillery
has been in the game for more than two decades. Other Oregon distillers
refer to him as the grandfather or the Yoda of small-batch distilling
in the state. He founded Clear Creek back in 1985 as a way to make
money from the pear orchards he owns in Hood River. But he also had
other objectives, including putting Oregon on the map for its high
quality local products and finding a better, more profitable use for
the land; to lead the way in alternative land use and prove to farmers
it's possible to make money without selling out to developers. Plus
he wanted some pear brandy, which, at the time, was extremely rare.
Like an older sibling who breaks in the parents by
fighting for later curfews and more freedom, McCarthy paved the way
for Oregon's now burgeoning distilling market. For 21 years he's educated
the public, going restaurant to restaurant, talking to one person
at a time explaining what he does and what he makes. He's also refined
his pear brandy, officially called Eau de Vie de Poire, and created
an award-winning product so exceptional it's well known throughout
the nation and even in Europe, where eau de vie originated. He's also
expanded his product line to include about a dozen other spirits,
with an Eau de Vie de Douglas Fir as his most recent.
"It's been 21 very long years," he said. "I would
say we make lovely stuff and many of our products are recognized as
the very best in the world." The Eau de Vie de Poire was awarded a
double gold medal at the World Spirits Competition held in San Francisco
in 2000, a year in which no other eau de vie was even awarded a single
gold. The next closest contender received a silver. "We're finally
starting to make some money," he added. "And getting some attention.
So I don't feel like I have to personally hand sell every bottle."
Legalize
It
McCarthy was brewing up fine spirits while some of
today's microdistillers were still playing with Legos. But his longevity
isn't the only thing that makes him a key player in the development
of distilling in Oregon. He and the McMenamin brothers got the OLCC
to change their regulations, making it possible for small-batch distillers
to actually sell their own products and hold tastings. Without that
change in the rules, microdistillers would have a tough time making
a go of it.
The way the OLCC works is that a producer of spirits
sells their products to the OLCC, which, in turn, places those products
in OLCC-controlled liquor stores through retail agents. Prior to 1987,
OLCC regulations prohibited a distiller from selling distilled products
to anyone except the OLCC.
"What the McMenamins wanted to do, and also Steve
McCarthy of Clear Creek, was to take it out of the huge industrial
process and handcraft small-batch products," said Katie Hilton, rules
coordinator for the OLCC. "The trouble is they didn't make enough
to sell it through the OLCC's liquor stores."
So, according to Marketing Director Renee Rank, the
McMenamins hired a lobbyist and convinced the OLCC to change the regulations.
"We carved out in law an exception to allow these small manufacturers
to get their products out through tastings, and a way for them to
sell their own products by becoming one of our [retail] agents," Hilton
said.
That made the whole business of microdistilling much
more palatable. Even though a small-batch distiller will most likely
lose money for the first three to five years they're in operation,
they can now directly promote and sell their products, which makes
microdistilling as a business possible.
The McMenamins opened their Edgefield distillery in
1998 immediately following another 1987 change in OLCC rules that
allowed a company to own and operate both a brewery and a distillery.
Prior to 1987 you could have one or the other, but not both. And now
McMenamins isn't the only Oregon brewing company to get into the distilling
business — Rogue recently started making both a light and a
dark rum.
Making
a Market
Right now the behemoth corporations that control the
spirits industry barely seem to notice microdistillers. While the
local trend is small, handcrafted distilled products, worldwide, the
spirits industry is consolidating. "That could be one of the things
that's making microdistilling more appealing to consumers," said Ken
Kossler, vice president of marketing and sales for Hood River Distillers.
"We're seeing a huge consolidation [in the industry] and sales of
major companies around the world. It's opened the door to some of
the boutique operations, some of the smaller shops. And as we saw
with microbrews, the Pacific Northwest is leading the way."
Unlike the beer industry, where the giants like Miller
and Busch saw microbrewers as a major threat, for now the spirits
corporations are taking little notice of the microdistillers. "I don't
feel the top down pressure that we felt in the brewing industry,"
said Anders Johansen, who owns Dolman Distillery and worked in the
beer industry from over a decade. "I don't think the big distilleries
are looking at the small guys as any kind of competition. Nor do we
have the same impact."
Steve McCarthy of Clear Creek thinks that might eventually
change, but he's happy to be operating under the radar of the spirits
corporations. "Guys like me, without knowing what we were doing, stumbled
into an industry dominated by a couple of huge giants," he said. "And
at this point, we're so small, they haven't started to pay attention
to us."
Savvy
Consumers Buy Local
Johansen, like many other distillers, comes from a
long background in the beer brewing business and worked at breweries
in Eugene, Bend (Deschutes Brewery) and finally for Pyramid Brewery.
He said that in the 15 or so years he's been in the business of making
brews and booze, consumers have become much more educated and savvy
in their buying practices and in their knowledge of the products.
Sipping a frothy bitter at the Bier Stein in Eugene,
he explained that one of the things the microbrewing and wine revolution
did was educate the public and raise consumers' expectations. Where
before people might have been happy with low quality, mass-produced
pilsners or wine in a box, now they expect rich, tasty beer and a
varied selection of high-quality, affordable, local and regional wines.
"With microdistilling, you're getting the same handmade,
artisanal qualities you're getting with the microbreweries," said
Scott Gallagher, director of leverage for Rogue Ales, which recently
started distilling rum.
And that's what consumers want these days. "People
don't care about the big corporations," said Bill Owens of the American
Distilling Institute. "They want something where they can go to the
distillery or the winery and meet the people who make it and then
support those people by buying the products. The public is out there
on a quest for the best. They want high quality things and distilling
is just part of that, things that are crazy and over the edge in wonderfulness."
Another thing that's helping out Oregon's microdistillers
is the growing awareness that buying locally-grown and -made products
is one of the keys to creating sustainable communities. So indirectly,
increased environmentalism and political awareness are also helping
folks like Johansen and McCarthy build their businesses.
"I think today consumers, especially consumers of
distilled spirits, are very intelligent people," Kossler said. "They're
very knowledgeable and are looking to purchase something very different
and unusual. And especially in Oregon, people are very happy to support
local industry. There is a 'buy local' culture here."
Plus most of Oregon's microdistillers are committed
to using local products, from grains to grapes. Reeder, distiller
for McMenamins, said they use pears from Hood River in the pear brandy.
For their aged brandy, they grow the grapes on site in Edgefield.
"I can look out my window and see the vineyard where my grapes are
grown," he said.
McCarthy uses the pears he grows in his own vineyards
for his famous Eau de Vie de Poire, and Johansen has been eyeing an
Asian pear orchard up the road for a new product. For his Eau de Vie
de Douglas Fir, McCarthy hauls buckets of high proof neutral spirits
out into the forests in the spring and snips the bright green buds
off the tips of the trees right into the buckets. And Bend Distillery
uses juniper berries harvested locally in their gins.
Local restaurants like Marché were some of the
first supporters of the local distillers, carrying their products
from the start. Specialty cocktails like Marché's summer Basil
Vice, which features House Spirits' Medoyeff vodka with Oregon huckleberry
and basil, also help promote the products. For the winter, bar manager
James West uses Medoyeff vodka in another cocktail, the P.A.S.S.,
a perfectly balanced blend of vodka, fresh grapefruit juice, crème
de cassis and champagne that's just amazing.
West stocks various local spirits including a few
from Clear Creek, House Spirits and Bend Distillery. He said mixing
it up with local products behind the bar is just an extension of Marché's
commitment to support local farmers and growers by buying their products
and featuring them on the menu.
But West doesn't stock the products from Oregon distilleries
just because they're from Oregon. Pouring out two small samples of
apple brandy, one from the famous French distiller Calvados and one
from Clear Creek, he swished the amber liquid in stemless Riedel glasses
and said, "Taste these. You tell me whether or not you think the Clear
Creek is better." All three tasters agreed: the Clear Creek was smoother,
with a richer nose and more flavor.
"The high quality of the local distilled products
is simply a reflection of the high quality of life in Oregon," he
said.
Defining
the Future
With an average two-year process to get a federal
distilling license, high cost equipment and the likelihood of losing
money for at least a few years, we probably won't see dozens of microdistillers
popping up around the state the way we did with microbrewers in the
'80s and early '90s. "These are people who understand that if you're
going to put a product out there, it has to be excellent," West said.
But currently at least three more local distillers are working through
the process of getting licensed.
We can expect the microdistilling scene to continue
growing and if the current quality of products is any indicator, Oregon
may once again become the frontrunner in the newest trend in booze.
"The beer industry got saturated pretty fast," said Christian Krogstad,
who owns House Spirits in partnership with Lee Medoff. "A lot of people
got into it and you had a lot of people making one style of beer,
those hoppy sweet ales. But distilling is pretty open. No one style
has become associated with Oregon distilled spirits yet. We're on
the cutting edge, creating the style and the market."
TASTE
TEST
I discovered an unexpected benefit to writing
about spirits: Everybody wants you to taste their products before
you write about them. So for a week, boxes filled with bottles of
vodka, gin, rum and brandy rolled through the doors of Eugene Weekly.
To get a varied array of opinions, I held a semi-formal
tasting over the weekend. This was not a gathering of hoity-toity
tasting snobs, but a group of 20- and 30-somethings who drink everything
from PBR and three-buck-Chuck to Sangiovese hauled back from Italy
and some of the finest whiskies money can buy.
The tasters didn't know the brands they were trying
until the end, and wrote their observations and comments on numbered
sheets. As they made their way out the door, they got to take two
of their favorite bottles along with them. Here's what they wrote
about the ones they chose:
Jake Baker, booze aficionado
Hood River's Pendleton 10-Year Whisky: Extra smooth
with the taste and texture of vanilla. Balanced and clean with a light,
rich aftertaste.
Melissa Bearns, associate editor
Clear Creek's Loganberry Brandy: Has a deep juicy
color and smells like a sunny summer day. The taste is sweet, an intensely
wonderful explosion of berry that lingers and fades incrementally.
"Right now I don't want to taste anything else because the taste in
my mouth is so good," commented Molly.
Bend Distillery's Cascade Mountain Gin: Has a very
clean, bright flavor with prominent aroma of juniper. Smooth going
down with a lingering aftertaste. Love this gin!
Jennifer Donahue, sales
Edgefield Distillery's Hogshead Whisky: A little young
but with a robust, leathery flavor and a smooth finish.
Jef Stout, classified manager
House Spirits Gin (on the market in mid-March): Incredibly
unique, with a spicy, sweet anise flavor and a hint of high-quality
root beer flavor.
Brandy Creek Blackberry Liqueur: Sweet, slightly peppery
and innocent. A nice balance between sweet and tart.
Molly Templeton, calendar editor and food editor
House Spirits' Medoyeff Vodka: It's got a bite, but
is smooth and disappears quickly. I want to mix drinks with this one.
(Later, I found this makes a fantastic vodka gimlet.)
Clear Creek's Eau de Vie de Poire: Smells sweet, like
extremely strong pear cider. Doesn't burn like the others, and the
pear flavor is much richer.
Oregon's
youngest distillers are right here in Cottage Grove.
by
Melissa Bearns
By their early 20s, brother
and sister Jeff and Megan Meyers had almost $100,000 in credit card
debt between them. They weren't buying clothes or cars or any of the
cool things people usually want at that age. They were sinking their
money into remodeling a 500-square-foot shop in their parents' back
yard and buying the equipment they needed to turn Jeff's senior project
at Cottage Grove High School into a real business.
 |
| Jeff
and Megan Meyers. |
It all started with Bloody Mary mix. Jeff was 17,
and for his cross-disciplinary senior project at Cottage Grove High
School he chose to start a small business making the mixer. His parents
had been self-employed his whole life and he knew that was what he
wanted to do too. So he chose a project he could actually turn into
a real business. And his family members were the guinea pigs.
"Oh my god, you should try some of the early batches,"
Jeff said, his gray-green eyes twinkling beneath the band of his backwards
baseball cap.
He and Megan still have the booklets where they wrote
down those early recipes — 5 pounds of this, 2 pounds of that
and a dash of something else. They'd test them on their parents and
their friends, and when the tasters reached a consensus, they made
that recipe a keeper and started making it in bulk.
 |
| The
Etiqueta Privada line of spirits and mixers. |
They got the necessary permits from the FDA and the
Oregon Health Department, bottled the stuff and started going liquor
store to liquor store trying to sell it. The first person who bought
their products was a woman named Kitty, who at the time owned and
managed the Cottage Grove Liquor Store.
That was 10 years ago. Now Jeff is 28 and Megan is
30. They own hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bottling, filtering
and distilling equipment and make three different kinds of vodka,
create and bottle products for dozens of other companies and have
expanded their little backyard project into a big-time business.
Sitting in the meeting room of their 36,000-square-foot
production building, Jeff does most of the talking. Megan, her wavy,
chestnut hair pulled back into a pony tail, sits quietly, chiming
in occasionally to fill in bits of the story as her brother speaks.
On the table in front of them they've laid out a rainbow
of bottles: green sweet and sour mix, lime-colored mojito mix, crimson
strawberry daiquiri mix, their second-to-bottom-shelf vodka, Octane,
with blue flames on the label, and even their environmentally friendly
firestarter/lighter fluid. But the bottle that jumps out at you, maybe
just because of the name, is their high-end vodka, the clear, tall,
graceful bottle marked boldly with the name: Lubrication. "People
ask us where we come up with these ideas," Jeff said, grinning. "Meg
and I talk about this stuff 24/7. And it's not all sexual by the way."
Their company, Side Pocket Foods, has finally started
to make some money and they've been in the black since last year.
"But then we go back into debt because every time we get some money,
we buy equipment," Jeff said. "Clients will come visit this place
and they look at us, and they can't understand how we can be so young
and have all this incredibly expensive equipment. Well look at the
cars, look at the houses. All our money has gone into this. We're
hoping this will be the year that the houses and the cars will come
through for us."
Ironically, even though they distill spirits, Jeff
is a professed beer drinker. "Well, even if we don't have as good
of a year as we're hoping, at least PBR is always on sale," he said.
