Prohibition Distillery, based in Roscoe, New York, in the heart of the Catskills, makes small-batch craft vodka, gin and bourbon under the label Bootlegger 21 New York. The OU-certified, gluten-free, highly regarded, award-winning products have helped the company become the leading micro-distillery in the New York area.
Bootlegger 21 Vodka is slow filtered for 24 hours through 800 pounds of activated charcoal, resulting in a spirit widely described as “dangerously smooth.” It will be featured at Congregation Ahavath Torah’s wine and spirits tasting on January 7, which is sponsored by Wine Country.
While Prohibition only started distilling spirits in 2009 and makes just 10,000 cases a year, its availability at high-end restaurants and bars in New York and New Jersey and the traction the company has created in the competitive marketplace of Manhattan and gastronomic influencers has been extraordinary. For example, the spirits are served in Giants Stadium, and their gin is the preferred gin of The Four Seasons Hotel in New York. Farm-to-table king Dan Kluger, a Manhattan restaurateur and acolyte of the famed Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, is a fan and uses the product in his new restaurant, Loring Place, which opened this week. “We are a $30 bottle of vodka, but we are in many of the world’s top martinis,” said Brian Facquet, Prohibition Distillery’s founder and chief executive.
“The world has changed,” Facquet told The Jewish Link. “People are moving away from mass-produced spirits, as part of those joining the farm-to-table movement. Chefs want to know their producers and where their products come from.”
Facquet explained that in restaurants within the farm-to-table movement, menus now say “chicken or vegetables from so-and-so farm,” as people are interested in local producers. “The same trend is happening in liquor. People come to us because we make a good product and we are impacting our local economy,” he said. He also added that he only uses New York state farmers for his corn and other ingredients and uses a local milling source, though he hopes to someday add an on-site mill to his distillery.
The spirits have won multiple awards and gold medals; one review of the vodka comments on its beautiful clarity, while adding that it possesses “delicate aromas of toasted custard, puff pastry and praline with a soft, silky dryish medium body and a smooth, talc and powdered sugar accented finish” (BTI 2010 Review of Spirits). If it’s possible, the gin is described by the company even more poetically. “Our goal was to have a juniper-forward gin and pull complementary floral, earthy and citrus notes from the coriander seeds, lemon verbena leaves, Orris root, also known as Iris root, and bitter orange peels. We steep our botanicals in 120 proof neutral spirit made from 100 percent corn for 24 hours to produce our maceration. We then distill the gin in our 300-gallon pot still to remove all of the color and bind the flavors. The ‘hearts’ are captured and blended down to 94 proof for bottling.”
Does Facquet want to get bigger, or grow his company to have more of his unique and sought-after spirits available throughout the country? While he has the capacity at his distillery to make more spirits (the distillery has a 1,200-gallon still, and the capacity to bottle 500 cases a day on its full-scale, state-of-the-art bottling line), Facquet said he would rather grow slowly and keep his brand exclusive. “It’s not a matter of being everywhere. As a brand owner and entrepreneur, I would rather be in 1,000 outposts in New York over 1,000 throughout the United States. I want to be the preferred spirits of the New York metro area. Besides, Wine Country will ship for me (to any of the 23 states where it ships),” he added. “I like being local.”
Facquet also shared his perspective as a small businessman competing with top-shelf brands that cost more and have massive marketing campaigns behind them, like Kettle One or Grey Goose. “I am competing against Goliath every day. I am sitting there, David with a slingshot. But there is room for both of us on the shelf. We know that if we put high-quality spirits in the bottle, then consumers will demand our products.
“Doing the right thing is at the core of everything we do. Our people, products and our daily goal of ‘doing good’ is what we care about and I think it is reflected in our products. The authenticity is what people care about,” he added. “We do not take shortcuts. As a craft distiller, we make good products,” he added.
Facquet noted that he takes pride in his squeaky-clean factory and his company’s similarly all-American image, which reflects his background coming from a military family and having himself served in the U.S. Navy, though he was quick to point out that he served in peacetime and did not see combat. In particular, when asked about the beautiful detail-work on the back of his bottles, which feature a raised painting in the glass of a poppy, the flower of remembrance, he explained that the poppy is in remembrance of his friends who have died in combat. With the poppy, Facquet tips a hat to those he calls “the real heroes.”
Prohibition Distillery is located in the former Roscoe Fire House and a former VFW Post. Facquet added that the distillery is a popular tourist destination and welcomes many visitors particularly in the summer, including Jewish visitors going to and from their vacation homes in the Catskills. They can visit the tasting room where they can taste the spirits and buy products, some of which are only available there. There is no cost to visit the distillery or to taste in the tasting room, but donations are gladly accepted, all of which go back to the Navy Seal Foundation. The focus of the tasting room is education, as Facquet wants people to understand how the spirits are made, “which allows for people to understand why our products taste the way they do,” he said.
Facquet added that since he is the builder of the business, he had great pride in what he has built. “When I say ‘aw shucks,’ I mean I want to do something for the right reasons,” and that includes a clean factory that puts out a great product and welcomes visitors to see the distillery process for themselves. “If you saw food made in a dirty factory you wouldn’t want to eat there. Our tours and tasting room (which opened in 2013) reflect the quality that we put in the bottle,” and Facquet added that as a consumer he never understood how products were distilled, and it’s important that people understand.
Prohibition is also a family affair, and Facquet said he takes advantage of the “free labor” offered by his father and sister as part of his small team of dedicated employees. Investors in the company are also mostly friends, Navy buddies and family. “I have no pedigree or great grandfather’s recipes. I just have hard work, tireless effort and am just trying to build something lasting for my family,” he said.
Taste the Bootlegger 21 New York vodka, bourbon and gin made by Prohibition and meet Brian Facquet at the Wine Country-sponsored Congregation Ahavath Torah annual wine and spirits tasting on January 7 at 8 p.m. For more information, call 201-385-0106.
By Elizabeth Kratz
