The building doesn't look like much from the outside -- cracking facade, grass growing in the rain gutters. The inside isn't much more ornate, save the hammered-copper pot still and the soaring, gleaming rectification column.
So they won't be giving many guided tours of this warehouse-turned-distillery in Shaler. But then, this was never about selling gift-shop T-shirts, say Prentiss Orr and Barry Young. It's about selling small batch, triple-distilled potato vodka -- made right here in Western Pennsylvania, one of the first distilleries in the state since Prohibition sent whiskey production to the South.
The first big shipment of Boyd & Blair Potato Vodka went out this week, and state stores should be stocking it by the weekend, selling it for $29.49 a bottle. Two test cases sent out last week to liquor stores in Richland and Cheswick sold well, with just a few bottles remaining after the weekend concluded, an indicator, to Mr. Orr and Mr. Young, that their years of planning are about to pay off.
"There has been a lot of buzz," said Mr. Orr, the marketing brains in this two-man operation and former vice president of the Greater Pittsburgh Area Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Young brings the chemistry experience to Pennsylvania Pure Distilleries LLC -- he's the former chief executive officer of RX Partners, a pharmaceutical services company.
Together, they've spent more than four years in planning: Business surveys. Site selection. Obtaining state grants. Raising capital from friends and family. And, of course, custom building a distillery in an empty bay at the old Glenshaw Glass works in Shaler.
Lately, they've been honing their brand and their sales pitch, which is roughly this: "No computers. No automated production line. Just two guys, a copper pot still and locally grown potatoes. ... Tours of our multiacre distillery will be available as soon as we get one."
"You only get one shot when you bring a new brand to market," Mr. Orr said.
They are working with an ad agency in the Strip District, developing a campaign that will reach across the Internet and into print media, hoping to benefit from the rising popularity of small-batch spirits and locavore consumption habits.
Why local potatoes? Why potatoes at all, for that matter? For one thing, they're readily available, from the same farmers who supply Pennsylvania's potato chip makers. Second, Mr. Young says, the potato produces a silkier, sweeter vodka than the stuff that is distilled from grains such as wheat, rye or corn. A taste test confirms this: subtly sweet to the nose, but not in a girly, flavored vodka kind of way. No peppery after-burn, even when drinking it neat, slightly chilled. This is so, they say, because they use only the "heart" of the distillation run to make their vodka (the initial condensed collections of fermented potato mash vapors, called the "heads," are discarded by Pennsylvania Pure and most other distilleries because they are volatile and smell a lot like model airplane glue; other distilleries keep and recycle the end runs, called "tails," but Pennsylvania Pure discards these, too).
Can you mix it? Of course, though it's easy to imagine that in many drinks the vodka's defining sweetness would be submerged. And in the case of the vodka martini, Mr. Young said he doesn't like the effect of vermouth on his creation.
It's one of the reasons most vodkas sold in the West are grain-based -- their neutrality, flavor-wise, is what made vodka so popular in the first place, easy to mix with just about anything, devoid of that telltale alcohol scent. Potato vodkas, on the other hand, originated in Poland and Russia in the early 1800s, after potato cultivation became common there.
More than they are paying homage to Old Europe, Mr. Young and Mr. Orr are, in their small way, reestablishing an industry that once thrived in old Pennsylvania. At one time, there were dozens of distilleries dotting Pennsylvania waterways. Today, there are two -- Pennsylvania Pure and Philadelphia Distilling, which makes Bluecoat American Dry Gin and was just recently licensed to produce vodka and absinthe.
"It's fun to carry on a legacy that Pennsylvania had been known for," Mr. Orr said.
Boyd & Blair (PLCB No. 005936, 750 milliliter, 40 proof) is named after Mr. Young's late father-in-law, James Boyd Rafferty, and Mr. Orr's great-grandfather, William Wightman Blair. Each bottle is dipped in black wax above the neck, and each one also bears Mr. Young's signature.
Soon, it will be carried in about 150 state stores, and several restaurants. If the vodka sells well, Mr. Young said, Pennsylvania Pure could, like its Philadelphia brother, expand into other spirits, such as rum or gin.
First Published: August 21, 2008, 8:00 a.m.
