Recent changes to the Vermont liquor control laws have made it easier for small distillers to market and sell their products.
Labyrinthian permitting and selling restrictions in the law made it dauntingly complicated for specialty houses to reach their public before the simplification of Sec. 1, VSA 2 went on the books in the last legislative session.
Act 102 was passed and signed in May of this year. The biggest changes, distillers say, is that they are now allowed to have tastings and sell their distilled products at special events, festivals and farmers markets in direct retail sales without having to go through Vermont Liquor Stores or distributors.
“My sales have increased about 80 percent,” Christian Stromberg of Saxtons River Distilleries, LLC, said recently. “When people can taste the product, they will often buy it. I sell a lot of the small bottles (375 ml) [at these events] that I couldn't sell before. People will return with their friends to buy the 750 ml bottles [once they've tasted it]. Word of mouth works really well [at festivals and farmer's markets]. People will bring other people back to taste it, and then they'll go home with a bottle. If we can get them to buy one bottle, they'll come back for more.”
Stromberg's face lit up when he spoke of the changes in the law making it friendlier for his product to reach the public.
“Previously, because it is a spirit, it could only be bought through Vermont Liquor Stores, if you could find one,” he said. “We approached a lot of wholesalers about displays,” Stromberg said, “but they weren't interested. It's too easy to steal the bottles.”
“Our bottles were put behind the counter because they're smaller bottles (750 ml), and they'd get lost there,” he explained. “They aren't allowed to promote it.”
Stromberg is one of only a few distillers in Vermont, and the only one in southern Vermont. Ed Metcalfe of Whitingham recently applied to the zoning board of Marlboro to expand his usage permit at the old base lodge of the Hogback ski area, to use as a distillery as well as a restaurant. He says he will begin distilling later this summer and says he would like to have his first raspberry liqueur ready to go for foliage season this fall.
Metcalfe admits, however, that he has a lot of work to do before then.
“I'm still in the permitting process with the state and I haven't heard back from the zoning board,” he said.
Metcalfe said he's completed the federal permits, but still has a lot of equipment to buy and set up. He didn't seem particularly fazed by the permitting process.
“You just have to go through it if this is what you want to do,” he said.
Metcalfe submitted and won first prize for his business plan for a distillery in Vermont in 2007.
“Because of personal reasons and the dip in the economy, I haven't pursued it until now,” he said.
Kate Dodge of Putney Mountain Wine complained vigorously, however, about the permitting process, both federally and state.
“It's easier for me to sell [wine] out-of-state than in Vermont. We do most of our sales onsite from our tasting room.”
Primarily a winery, Putney Mountain Wine last year decided to try a new product and applied for and got permits to make a fortified wine called Putney Pommeau. At the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition, the Pommeau was awarded a gold medal.
“But we're out. We sold out immediately,” Dodge said.
And it is undecided if they will make more.
“By law, the distillate had to be of the same product as the wine. We found a distiller in St. Johnsbury who has since gone out of business, and gave him our wine to distill,” Dodge said.
Dodge explained that she adds the distillate to the wine to make it “fortified.”
“But it's very expensive to have local distillers do it for us. We're trying to decide if we want to go that way still,” Dodge said.
Stromberg, on the other hand, said that his sales of his Sapling liqueur have only increased each year since he first put it on the shelf.
“I was thrilled when we sold out our first bottling off the shelves” when it was still limited to being sold only in Vermont Liquor Stores. “I knew we had something. We didn't really even advertise,” he said.
Stromberg has taken great care with the whole product, beginning with the bottles which he imports from France.
“They're a standard bottle, but the glass is extraordinarily clear,” he said. “This helps the color [of the liqueur] which is a rich amber.” His bottle supplier sells about 500,000 bottles a year, of which he is one of 100 customers. “We're not getting bottles from China but these are still standard liqueur bottles. They just have an elegant look other bottles don't.”
He said that initially he polled his friends for their opinions on the bottles. “I didn't have any kind of base then so what are you gonna do? I asked my friends what they preferred.”
Stromberg's passion for his product is in part in his genes, and in part because distilling liqueur is mostly a technical venture. More recently his family was in manufacturing and he wanted to have his own business. He also has a background in engineering.
His Lithuanian family background gave him three previous generations of distilling what they called 'krupnikas,' a honey liqueur. “But Americans don't really like honey so I had to think of something else,” Stromberg said. “I started thinking about the fact that people will still pay good money for spirits even in a bad economy, and how we have excellent fruits here in the U.S. Why couldn't we make a good liqueur here too?”
His family, originally from Brooklyn, now mostly lives in the Brattleboro area, so Stromberg looked at what was unique to Vermont and largely untapped. “Back when I started two years ago, we were the only ones using maple sap. Now there's others.”
He's proven successful.
Stromberg's operation is based in part of an old cow stall to which he built an attached barn. His operation has grown to a full-time job and he is always doing something. “It's a continuous process,” he said sitting in front of a filtration machine that he runs the liqueur through four times before the Sapling liqueur is bottled. “I was hoping to find another place [this spring] but that didn't happen. Now we're well into the season and I'll have to wait.”
Stromberg does everything himself from offloading pallets of bottles from France, to the technical aspects of measuring the ratio of alcohol to comply with regulations for 70 proof alcohol that liqueurs fall into, bottling and filtrating.
He points to the vat from which he is filtering the product. “That's on a scale,” he said. “I'm not measuring it right now but even that is part of the process.” A liqueur's specific gravity must fall within a certain range. “There's some latitude,” Stromberg smiled. “That's part of our trade secret as well as the specific recipe.” Stromberg was mum about the length of aging, or rest, that the liqueur will sit before being bottled.
“It's partly a matter of taste, partly a matter of color, part technical,” he explained, “and all why I love it.”
To one side in the room sit three oak barrels he bought from Makers Mark, producers of small-batch bourbon distilled in Kentucky.
“They can only use the barrels once,” he said, and explained that both the oak and remaining bourbon flavor in the barrels was part of the background of the Sapling liqueur. “It's personal preference. I like the taste.”
He said his corn based distillate is bought from a big distiller in New York State. “Eventually I want to distill it myself.” He indicates the recycled metal sap barrels he's converting to the steam barrels for distilling; and to a handmade siphoning tubes that he hired Frank Waddleton, a Mountain Bike Hall of Fame inductee and welder in Bellows Falls, to do non-magnetic stainless steel welds for.
Stromberg has a long view but understands that this is where he is at now, sitting alone in his distillery among bottled and labeled cases of Sapling liqueur, Makers Mark oak barrels and a filtration system he has turned off to have a conversation.
“I want to use everything local,” he said. “If I can't reach out and put my hand on it [like the sap or corn], then it's too far away. It gets complicated and it's not a local product then.”
He's conscientious of the symbiotic relationships his business can create, and has all ready begun. “If I start distilling, I've got to think about what to do with the mash. It's feed. So I find someone with a pig who can come by every day to pick it up and feed his pig,” he smiles. “But that's just one part of it.”
Stromberg's bottles also have a deposit label on them.
“Of course,” he grinned.
Asked if he was concerned about the effects of climate change, he said, “Naturally. This year, the sugarers who did well started tapping their trees in January. Those who waited until later [when they traditionally start in the early spring] didn't get as much.”
He shook his head when he considered maple syrup becoming impossible to get. “We'll just have to see.”
He said right now he has three local sugarers who provide him with about 800 gallons of syrup which he prefers to be grade A dark. “I need more [to keep up with demand].”
Stromberg has no employees. “I can't really fit anyone else in here,” he says as he sweeps his hand around the room. “The floor gets sticky, and things start flying,” he laughed. “When it's big enough and self-sustaining enough, I'll hire other people.”
For now, Stromberg's one-man operation is expanding to Maine, Massachusetts and California, having found a transport delivery service that was happy to fill their previously one-way delivery trucks from the West Coast with something going back.
“I hope to have a store too, somewhere,” he said, “eventually.”
He can sell his Sapling liqueur directly to the customer now, thanks to changes in Vermont laws, and have tastings at special events and farmers markets. His next event, he said, will be the Shelburne Cheesemakers Festival July 25 at Shelburne Farms in Shelburne.
“Retail sales changed [the business]. The margins aren't huge. I have to plan a half a year out and keep an eye on things all the time,” he grinned. “But the process is improving all the time, is more efficient and better now.”
Thanks no doubt, as well, go to his engineering background and a one-man dedication to making a single product that seems to encapsulate Vermont's growing interest in regional specialty foods, wines and spirits.