Last Sunday my friend Veronica organized a tour at Industry City Distillery on the western edge of Sunset Park. The area reminded me of both Red Hook and Gowanus, with big warehouse spaces turned into production/artists spaces, and right on the water. Definitely a place I wouldn’t mind spending a Sunday afternoon, especially when vodka-tasting is involved.
Industry City Distillery is unusual in that they use beet sugar to make vodka, which unlike grain and starch, produces no solid waste. Their product launched in April and is already getting a lot of notice in the NY area. (Check out the map of where to buy their vodka, in addition to online.) We toured their facility, which held their fermentation and distillation equipment and the metal shop where they built all their production equipment by hand. They even have a letterpress machine (!) for printing all their labels.
So far their production is still very small-scale, about 200 bottles a week, all bottled and labeled by hand. But they’re aiming to increase production ten-fold. As for the vodka itself, it’s definitely smooth and goes down easily, and as we discovered, mixes very well with some Bruce Cost ginger ale and a bit of ice on a summer afternoon. It’ll be exciting to see what’s next for them down the road.
