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buying his entire inventory of 30,000 tubes. They had taken three months to make, with each tube hand-filled and sealed. The plumber was officially in the liquor business. As Dickson tried to keep up with demand, another distillery was just breaking ground, 10 miles north on Interstate 35. Outside a redbrick building, only a few potted topiaries hint that the business within is unlike the rest of this commercial complex’s tenants. Inside, the aroma of fresh-baked bread — courtesy of the boiling grain a few hundred feet away — fills the tiled lobby. Dark Horse Distillery is the brainchild of four siblings: Damian, Patrick, Eric and Mary Garcia. On a January afternoon, they share a sofa facing a wall of windows looking out on the 500-gallon copper still (from Vendome Copper & Brass Works in Louisville, Kentucky) and the stainless-steel fermentation tanks that are the heart of the newest distillery in Kansas. Like Dickson and Dark Horse CEO Kris Hennessy (who has long sold veterinary vaccines), they’ve been lured off surer career tracks by the prospect of making their own spirits. “The Kansas City market was one that hasn’t been tapped,” Eric Garcia says. “We wanted to drink something that was made here. We’ve seen other success stories in Kansas City, and we aspire to bring something here that hasn’t been done yet.”
8 4 tT h H eE p P iI t Tc Ch H
Patrick, 34, was the first to walk away from his job. He was working as an investment banker for Charles Schwab. He oversaw the fitting of this 6,500-square-foot warehouse space last winter and began learning the craft alongside Travis Vander Vegte, the company’s other distiller who has been mashing and cooking since last July. “Most of the time, Travis handles the milling, and I handle the distillation, but we trade those duties frequently,” Patrick says. “It’s
“There’s no graduate school for distilling, but it’s not rocket science,” Owens says. “It just takes practice. We’ve been distilling for 6,000 years.” Damian, 35, came on next, as the head of sales and marketing. He left a sales job at Rheuark FSI, where he had worked with clients in the food and beverage industry for 13 years. “Dark Horse symbolized us as a group,” Damian says. “We are starting out at the back of the pack. We’re the underdogs. But we’re ready to run.”
“THE ALCOHOL BUSINESS NEEDED ANOTHER PRE-MIXED MARGARITA LIKE A HOLE IN THE HEAD. THE DIFFERENCE WAS THE PACKAGING AND THE FACT THAT WE MAKE A REAL MARGARITA.” a big change from sitting behind a desk to controlling this thing,” he adds, giving the still a gentle pat. Notes for each batch go on dry-erase boards clipped to the fermentation tanks. Dark Horse is producing 40-50 gallons a day, and Garcia spends seven to eight hours working next to the still — exactly what the American Distilling Institute’s Owens prescribes.
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Eric, 30, left Chicago this past December, after resigning from the state prosecutor’s office. He’s the only one of the family who admits that he has watched Discovery Channel’s Moonshiners as part of his distillery education. And Mary, 23, having recently graduated from the University of Missouri with an English degree, came on this winter to oversee special events and the company’s social-media strategy.
Shark Attack margaritas are packaged at the microdistillery’s Olathe plant. The family has always been close. They grew up in south Kansas City. Their father worked for IBM, and their mother was a bank teller. Family dinners are on Wednesday nights, and their mother watches her grandchildren while the siblings hash out issues with the distillery. The company received its manufacturing license last April, and its first products are due out this spring: Long Shot White Whiskey and Rider Vodka. On the calendar for late summer: rye whiskey and bourbon aged in charred American oak barrels. “This is a new way of doing things,” Eric says. “It’s about what we can do differently.” “There’s touches of the traditional, with the copper still from Kentucky, but we’re aiming for the modern feel of the Northwest,” Damian adds. Three event spaces at the Dark Horse Distillery flow in an L-shape around the distilling room, and there’s a showpiece kitchen with enough stainless steel and granite to star on an HGTV remodeling show. Pendant lights and wrought-iron lanterns hang over supple leather couches and dark-wood tables. The floor-toceiling windows throughout the facility mean that the distillery’s operations are always transparent. On a Tuesday in January, rye is being brewed in the still. The adjacent mash cooker is busy agitating grains — it sounds like a large room fan. The spent grains go to a local farmer