f f o g n i t e k c o r future THE O T
WRITTEN BY AMBER G. CHRISTENSEN-SMITH PHOTOGRAPHY BY AMANDA JOY CHRISTENSEN
legacy It’s a quaint building laid out before you when you come upon the of fabrication. The men in his family even crafted their own still Seattle Distilling Company (SDC) headquarters. Nearby, on the and experimented with distilling. At one time, out of desperation, quiet property, you can see a children’s swing set with giggling they made a moonshine out of lawn clippings. “I wouldn’t try minions running around and an equally close-at-hand custom that at home,” Joyce muses. This upbringing instilled in Joyce a painted Volkswagen Bus adorned with the distillery’s classic fascination with fermentation, causing his own experimentation looking logo. It is a family run business benefiting from the hard with wine and cider making…and then distilling. work of all members—men, women, and children—as the owners explain and pride themselves in. “It really isn’t just the guys. It’s the wives and the kids, it’s all of us working together to make
desire
great spirits—by hand, from scratch,” says Paco Joyce, master Joyce was primarily raised in the Mojave Desert. Upon graduating distiller.
from high school, he wanted to go somewhere with rain. He
Joyce is obviously comfortable in this setting as he grew up in longed for a green landscape that was much less dry than what a family business himself. His uncles and grandfather in Butte, he was accustomed to. With that he found himself at Gonzaga MT were welders, owning their own foundries. These same University in Spokane, Washington, and not too long after uncles and grandfather were tinkerers as well, and Joyce grew up graduation (and some work in social work utilizing his Psychology hanging out in a metal shop—a place where he learned the skills degree), he journeyed with his wife to her hometown of Vashon,
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