A Pearl of a Spirit Distillery 98 offers sustainable spirits with a local twist

By Kelly Oden

Cardboard, oyster shells and corn may not be words typically associated with vodka distillation, but Distillery 98 in Santa Rosa Beach is finding new ways to produce and package America’s most consumed spirit. With a passion for spirits and sustainability, Harrison Holditch and his brother-in-law, David Kapitanoff, set out to turn a backyard hobby into an environmentally conscious business.

Originally from the Houston area, Holditch had long been distilling with Kapitanoff for fun, but it wasn’t until he was helping a friend open a business in Colorado that the two had an epiphany—why not open a distillery? Holditch and Kapitanoff were familiar with 30A as they had vacationed in the area over the years and they were casually considering it as a location for their distillery. After seeing many serendipitous signs (including a Houston wedding catered by Grayton Beach Beer Company and a 30A bumper sticker on a car in Colorado) they decided it was the perfect place to put down roots and open their dream distillery.

With Holditch as CEO and Kapitanoff as head distiller, the pair set out on their mission to make top-tier, grain-to-glass craft vodka using local resources and utilizing sustainable practices as much as possible. To that end, the pair uses non-GMO corn (that is grown just a few miles away in Okaloosa County) to create their signature vodka, Half Shell. Half Shell is filtered through coconut carbon and seven to eight inches of whole oysters for roughly 72 hours. Beyond being a unique nod to our area, Holditch said that oyster filtration actually serves an important purpose.

“Live oysters take the dirt and grime out of the water and turn them into pearls,” Holditch explained. “They are naturally filtering our gulf as they do their job. What’s also really cool about oyster shells is that they are made of a lot of earth minerals, but predominantly calcium. That calcium raises the pH of our high-proof spirit when we filter it. Raising the pH neutralizes it and makes it more balanced and less acidic. It just adds an extra balancing technique to our process. It’s taking our vodka and turning it into a pearl. That’s how we think of our spirits. We filter it through those oysters and remove the dirt and grime from the corn growing in the field. As it passes through those oysters, it becomes that pearl of a spirit that we put into our bottles.”

This special filtration process is what gives Half Shell a distinctively clean, coastal flavor with a slight hint of corn on the back end, Holditch said. The leftover corn mash that isn’t used in the distilling process is picked up by a local farmer to be used as feed, creating a nice biodynamic circle of sustainability.

Another wonderfully unique aspect of Half Shell is the sustainable packaging. Ingeniously “bottled” in a cardboard box, the packaging is 97 percent recyclable. While such bottling has become popular in the wine industry, Holditch says that Distillery 98 is the first in the US to use it to bottle spirits.

“We’re going towards a more beach and environmentally friendly product,” Holditch said. “It’s customer friendly, too, because it’s at a lower price point. What’s cool about this cardboard is that you can take it down to the beach and you can take it on the boats—anywhere you’re not allowed to have glass. The Half Shell packaging has a carbon footprint that is six times smaller than a glass bottle. There are a lot of things that we wanted to do differently here at Distillery 98 and one big thing was to be a better steward of our environment.”

As for the distillery itself, the production portion consists of an impressive 5,000-square- foot distillation space that cranks out a few thousand gallons of spirits per year using geothermally cooled equipment. While Dune Laker is the featured spirit of Distillery 98, they also produce another, limited edition, signed bottle vodka called Dune Laker, which is named for the famous coastal dune lakes found in our region and is only available along 30A. Holditch and Kapitanoff are also working on producing a couple of new rums using

Florida cane sugar and blackstrap molasses, which will be introduced in the coming months.

A lovely, coastal tasting room that is anchored by an impressive cypress bar and decorated with oyster shell chandeliers, whiskey barrels and vintage Florida photographs takes up the other 2,500-square-feet of the distillery and also serves as an event space. The tasting room offers a variety of cocktails using the distillery’s signature products as well as many locally sourced mixers and garnishes from regional businesses like Amavida Coffee and Noli South Kombucha.

Distillery 98’s vodka can be found all along 30A and at bars, restaurants and spirit stores throughout Florida. The distillery is located at 835 Serenoa Road in Santa Rosa Beach. Open-hour tours are available Monday through Thursday from 2 to 4 pm. The tasting room is open seven days a week from 1 to 7 pm with a happy hour from 2 to 5 pm. For more information on Distillery 98, visit distillery98.com or check out Distillery 98 on Facebook.