Spirits are top shelf; what they need is shelf space
This distillery has wowed critics, but it needs distributors.

By JODIE TILLMAN

Henry Kasprow, 46, and his father, Ted Kasprow, 72, run the 3-year-old Empire Winery & Distillery in New Port Richey. Their family owned and operated distillery Empire Wine Spirits recently won awards for their vodka and citrus-flavored liquours.
NEW PORT RICHEY - One day last summer, the proprietor of a California gourmet grocery received two bottles from an acquaintance in Florida. One bottle held orange liqueur, the other mead.
The proprietor opened the bottles, took sips and declared the drinks "marvelous." He wanted more, and he wanted to put them on his shelves.
This yearning of a well-connected grocer eventually got New Port Richey's Empire Winery & Distillery in the California market. One small success story, but many more are needed: When you're a mom-and-pop alcohol producer, you're competing against recognizable brands with slick and pervasive marketing campaigns.
"As a virtual nobody, you've got to prove yourself, " said Henry Kasprow, a 46-year-old Lutz resident who runs the 3-year-old Little Road distillery with his father, Ted. "I want to show the American public that we have the highest quality products."
Those who know top-shelf liquors say the Kasprows have a special operation with plenty of potential. The key, they say, is for Empire to continue to find appreciative audiences, especially those with connections.
"These people are artisans, " said Rick Mindermann, a manager at Corti Bros., the California gourmet grocery that now carries Empire's mead, its orange and lime liqueurs, and its vodka.
A family legacy
Empire, which employs six people, makes small batches of liquor applying old-fashioned methods, using honey and fresh fruit from Florida in its liqueurs and distilling its rye-based vodka six times in copper pot stills. The products sell in a handful of Tampa Bay area stores and restaurants.
Vodka, the country's most popular liquor, is the biggest seller for Empire, too. Bottles run about $30, the same as other high-end vodkas.
This potent and neutral spirit is in the Kasprows' blood: Henry Kasprow's great-grandfather ran a distillery in Poland until the start of that country's communist regime. When Henry was 9, he and his mother fled the country and joined Ted, who had escaped two years earlier, in Canada.
The family ran auto dealerships and auctions in Canada but never lost the desire to once again run a distillery. They eventually settled in Florida, where they thought the state regulations were less restrictive than some other states, and where they could find a ready supply of fresh citrus for their liqueurs.
"We decided to step back in the family history, " he said
Small among giants
Empire's old-style craftsmanship - it makes its vodka in single batches from start to finish - means a more sophisticated taste for vodka aficionados, said Bill Owens, who runs a California organization called the American Distillery Institute. He visited Empire recently while researching a book on the industry.
By contrast, he said, most of the best-known vodka companies do not even do their own distilling: They buy their neutral grain spirits from one of four industrial-sized distilleries in the Midwest. The vodka companies then blend and bottle the product, dedicating much of their budget to marketing.
Craft distillers could eventually see the same boon that speciality beer makers enjoy. Owens noted they may also benefit from a growing interest in locally grown, organic food.
"There's going to be a real renaissance, " he said.
Word of mouth
But here's where the tricky part for Empire comes in: As many fans as the company might have, it is the distributors it must ultimately win over.
America's system of alcohol distribution requires producers like Empire to score contracts with major distributors if they want to penetrate the retail sector.
But most of the big distributors have tied up their business with major producers, such as Absolut, Kasprow said.
Alcohol distributors do more than ship alcohol: They are a big part of the salesmanship, helping retailers decide where products should go on the shelves and organizing promotional events.
Empire sells its products in a limited number of Tampa Bay area stores and restaurants, including in a storefront at its plant. It uses small distributors, including one, T & TK Distributors LLC, registered to Kasprow's wife, Barbara. In California, Corti Bros. persuaded a medium-sized distributor to bring the Empire products to its store.
Without the marketing power of a Grey Goose, Empire depends on serendipitous tastings and word of mouth.
And as much as he likes talking about his vodka, Kasprow stays quiet about the precise methods of his family's distillation process.
"It's a very important art that many old distillers take to their graves, " he said.
Fast Facts:
Empire's honors
Empire's vodka, V6, won the gold medal at the 2007 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Robert Plotkin, an industry consultant and judge, described the vodka as "imminently smooth, highly aromatic."
Empire Winery and Distillery is at 11807 Little Road, New Port Richey. It can be reached at (727) 819-2821 or www.empirewineryand distillery.com.
============================

BOOK REVIEW:
That's the Spirit: History of home distilling has recipes for trying it yourself
By Charles Perry
LOS ANGELES TIMES

That's the Spirit: History of home distilling has recipes Rowley, a food writer and a former board member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, points out that home distilling isn't inherently an outlaw thing. At the time of the American Revolution, most families distilled all sorts of things for their own use, and the lady of the house was the one in charge of the stillroom.
Still, the cover of his book is a bit misleading - it shows a stereotypical hillbilly and his dog and promises "drinking songs, knee-slappers and tall tales." Rowley does include that sort of country corn, but this book isn't the liquid cousin of the white-trash cookbooks that had a vogue in the '80s. It's about the world of home distillation, legal as well as illegal, urban and rural, past, present and possibly future, complete with 23 recipes.
Much of the story he tells is familiar. The frontier farmers who took to selling corn whiskey because they couldn't transport their corn crop on the bad roads of the time; the wars with revenue agents; Prohibition; the daredevil moonshine haulers who later became some of the top NASCAR drivers.
It will come as a surprise to some people to learn that moonshine is not dead - far from it. There's big money in supplying disreputable bars with cheap, headachy 'splo (short for "explosion") distilled from sugar and cattle feed.
Rowley has an enthusiastic taste for the good stuff, but he makes no bones about the fact that a lot of commercial moonshine is shoddily made or even poisonous. It may contain lead because the stills have been cheaply put together with lead-based solder, and there's a chilling list of additives some moonshiners resort to for more "kick," including lye and embalming fluid.
In cheering for a revival of home distilling, Rowley is careful to say that he's not advising anybody to bypass any of the convoluted federal and state regulations on distilling - the Feds alone can hit you with a $10,000 fine and five years in prison. On the contrary, he expresses the hope that the more people practice home distillation legally, the more the government will be pressured to relax those laws, just as it decriminalized home brewing in 1978.
(By the way, he gives some links to the Tax and Trade Bureau's Web site concerning those regulations, but the links no longer work, so you should just go to its home page, www.ttb.gov, and hunt around for the link you want, such as FAQs.)
=======================

Cheers to George, as replica of distillery opens at estate
Matthew Barakat
Associated Press
Mount Vernon, Va.

After a nearly 200-year hiatus, George Washington's still is bubbling again, churning out the same sort of rye whiskey that made the founding father the nation's most successful whiskey producer in the years after his presidency.
Washington's Mount Vernon estate recently opened a $2.1 million reconstruction of Washington's original distillery on the exact site where it was located in 1799, a few miles down the road from his mansion overlooking the Potomac River.
Mount Vernon officials hope the distillery will illustrate Washington's prowess as an entrepreneur. The estate also won special legislation this year from the Virginia General Assembly to sell limited quantities of the whiskey - up to 5,000 gallons a year - to give estate visitors a taste of alcohol history.
The distillery is considered a gateway to the American Whiskey Trail, which includes historic sites along with working distil leries that are open to the public, such as Jim Beam and Wild Turkey in Kentucky and Jack Daniel's in Tennessee.
The Mount Vernon distillery "will become the equivalent of a national distillery museum," said Frank Coleman, spokesman for Distilled Spirits Council, which paid for the reconstruction.
"Whiskey tourism is growing around the world, just like tourists go to Bordeaux or the Napa Valley to visit wineries. This sort of helps us level the playing field with winemakers," Coleman said. "There could be no better representative for America's distilling heritage than George Washington."
Washington's farm manager, Scotsman James Anderson, began distilling whiskey in February 1797, in the final months of Washington's presidency. Anderson persuaded a reluctant Washington to build a large-scale distillery a few months later.
By 1799, Washington was producing 11,000 gallons of whiskey a year - sold at 50 cents a gallon for the common variety and $1 a gallon for the more refined product, which was run through the still four times.
Washington died that year, and soon thereafter the business fell off. Within a decade, the building fell into disrepair. In 1814, it burned to the ground.
Archaeological work began on the distillery in 1997, and workers found the remnants of the five copper pot stills, along with other artifacts that provided clues to the still's operation.
Mount Vernon director of preservation Dennis Pogue said he is confident that the reconstructed distillery closely mimics Washington's actual operation.
"I think he'd recognize it. The main distilling room in particular is most authentic," he said.
Mount Vernon says the distillery is the only one in the nation, and possibly the world, that authentically demonstrates 18th-century distilling techniques.
The stills will distill liquid on a daily basis to demonstrate the process to visitors; whiskey will be made only on special occasions. The whiskey will be available for purchase at the estate and at the gristmill site, but it may be an unfamiliar taste to modern palettes. Washington did not age his whiskey as distillers do today.
The product is colorless and less refined. It would have been considered high-quality whiskey in its day, but Mount Vernon director James Rees once compared it to "white lightning," slang for homemade whiskey or moonshine.
Cheers to George, as replica of distillery opens at estate
=====================