Back in 2005, the microdistillery movement was only just beginning in the United States. Montana hoped to capitalize on the trend, but Prohibition had left much to change before the industry could take root in the state. “A hundred years ago, the country was awash in saloons and public drunkenness, and the reason it was happening was that the national producers of both beer and spirits were basically running franchise bar operations,” Wiseman says. “You didn’t have to have any money to start a bar. You just needed to rent a joint and the beer company would come in, completely furnish it and provide you with beer. All you had to do was pay the bill. Same with liquor.” With the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, Montana handed the responsibility of pricing and distributing liquor over to the state Liquor Control Board. Eventually that duty passed to the Department of Revenue, which continues to control the sale of distilled spirits at the wholesale level. Every bottle of liquor sold in Montana passes through a state warehouse, where it’s inventoried, taxed and marked up for retail. The taxes leveled at that warehouse were one of the key hurdles to microdistilling in the state, a cost-restrictive system that Helena attorney Mike Uda—who had dreams of opening Vigilante Distilling—vowed to change in 2005. Wiseman sponsored a bill on Uda’s behalf in the 2005 Montana Legislature. House Bill 517, better known as the Microdistillery Act, sought to establish a Montana distillery license and knock the high tax rates down for liquor produced in-state. Wiseman had come to Helena largely to improve Montana’s economy, and says he’d seen a friend succeed wildly in the craft brewing business in Bozeman. He simply saw microdistilling as “the next logical step.” “From an economic standpoint, it just makes perfect sense that we make it for ourselves,” Wiseman says. “We grow the barley. Why would we ship in beer from St. Louis or Milwaukee or Seattle when we can make it for ourselves, and have a really virtuous economic cycle where those entrepreneurs are building
equity and ownership and employment? So when the microdistillery bill got put in front of me, I thought, ‘Hell yeah. It’s the same thing.’” The bill passed neatly in the House, 70 - 27, and went on to the Senate, where it was picked up by then-Senate President Jon Tester. HB 517 was revised and amended and passed 37 - 13. Then, in Wiseman’s words, “all hell broke loose” on the House floor. Former supporters turned on the legislation, Wiseman explains, after “a faction” of the tavern owners “went ape-shit.” Several provisions in the bill were altered. The number of bottles and drinks microdistilleries were allowed to sell on-site were reduced. But the bill passed, and newly elected Gov. Brian Schweitzer signed it into law May 6, 2005. “Then, nothing happened for quite some time,” Wiseman says. Four years passed with no microdistilling activity in the state. Only after Wiseman revisited a second liquor tax during the 2009 session did the floodgates finally open. That same spring, in the halls of the state Capitol, he got word that Montana’s first microdistillery had finally opened: RoughStock Distillery in Bozeman.
Ask Bryan Schultz which of the whiskeys he distills is his favorite and he’ll tell you it’s “like asking which kid you love most.” So he defaults to RoughStock’s most popular bottle—the Pure Malt, which, to extend Schultz’s metaphor, happens to be his first child. Schultz had first thought to open a microdistillery in 2005, following the passage of Wiseman’s original bill. But with the state’s liquor excise tax still set at 16 percent even for small producers, the distribution end of the business was financially unfavorable. Once Wiseman’s 2009 tax revision had leveled the playing field for microdistilleries, Schultz moved on to the next hurdle: brand recognition. “Starting a new distillery from scratch, being a small guy and growing into our distribution shoes, so to speak, as far as what we could make, took a lot of education,” Schultz says. “It took a lot of just going out and talking to liquor store owners, bar and restau-
rant owners, [and] trying to get everybody to notice and realize there was something here, that we weren’t just some rebranded bulk alcohol made somewhere else that had some fancy marketing behind it.” Schultz had traveled widely in Europe and seen firsthand the operations in Scotland and Ireland that perfected the art of distilling whiskey. RoughStock never really had much of a plan to manufacture anything else, Schultz says. The grain-growing regions of Montana reminded him too much of northern Europe for him to be interested in much beyond whiskey. “The abundance of grain and natural water— good water—we have in the western part of the state was kind of the formula for what we wanted to do,” Schultz says. “We kind of modeled ourselves after a lot of the scotch distilleries and some of the other smaller whiskey distilleries that you never hear of that dot the western European landscape.” Schultz and his wife, Kari, both came from agricultural backgrounds in the state. Through bottles of booze, the two thought to give Montana “a spot on the map.” Their tasting room, situated on the corridor between Bozeman and Big Sky, draws mostly tourists curious about what Montana can produce. That exposure helped the couple “put something in a bottle that’s representative of Montana agriculture.” Tourism, in fact, has become the main driver for many of the state’s distilleries. As Brady Wiseman puts it, Montana’s population is a deceptive figure. The state may only have one million residents, but it averages nearly 10 million visitors a year. Each bottle of Montana spirits acts as a sort of ambassador, a sentiment shared widely among state distillers. But these ambassadors didn’t arrive overnight. Microdistilling requires a hefty investment up front. Schultz estimates the initial overhead of legal fees, still equipment, raw materials and other necessities came to well over $500,000. Distillers have to secure licensing and equipment before they can even begin producing a product. Whiskey in particular requires aging, sometimes for years, so Schultz found himself looking far ahead from the very beginning, before the customer base was even there. “We knew we weren’t going to make any money for a very long time,” Schultz says. “Talk to me here
at the 10- to 15-year mark and I might have a better report for you as far as money making. “We didn’t get into this to make a million dollars overnight,” he continues. “It’s a slow-growth process. We can’t make whiskey any faster than we do, and we certainly can’t age it any faster.” For the first two years, Schultz and his wife did everything at RoughStock themselves. They’ve since moved to a larger facility, hired nine employees and opened a tasting room in May 2011. This year, the distillery is planning to move again. Schultz says that at this point, “we’re making enough to keep the lights on and increase production without amassing a huge debt.”
Brian Anderson, co-owner of Whistling Andy Distillery in Bigfork, knows all too well the pains of sitting on an aging product. Whistling Andy opened New Year’s Eve 2010, and Anderson wasted no time perfecting his recipes for vodka, gin and, particularly, his hibiscus coconut rum. He filled several barrels with bourbon close to two years ago, which he hopes will be ready later this year. Whistling Andy has already released an unaged whiskey—or moonshine— as well as a whiskey aged for just over a year. The first release of the latter, about 375 bottles, sold out in a day and a half during St. Patty’s 2012. The third barrel sold out just as quickly last holiday season. Standing in the distillery’s backroom, Anderson talks about the ups and downs of the business over the last few years. The rum’s been a big seller, he says, and even won a platinum award at the Spirits International Prestige competition in fall 2011. Whistling Andy now distributes in nine states, three Canadian provinces and Australia. “We just wrapped up negotiations for another distribution deal a couple days ago,” Anderson says. “We’re going to be in Taiwan now, too.” Anderson has always had a passion for liquor. He’s a self-proclaimed science geek and former geo-hydrologist who grew up in the Flathead. The mash tank in his distillery is a repurposed 600-gallon ice cream maker, once a “God-awful battleship blue color,” that used to make Eskimo Pies. Beakers and test tubes litter the place,
photos by Cathrine L. Walters
missoulanews.com • August 1–August 8, 2013 [15]