Law change could boost local distillery sales

WASILLA — Right now, the Alaska Distillery looks about like what you’d expect for a craft whiskey maker.

Large containers and various tools of the industrialized distilling trade lined a rented 5,000-square-foot airplane hangar next to an airstrip off Shoreline Drive. Oak barrels were stacked under buzzing overhead fluorescents. Despite signs prominently featuring Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong promoting the (THC-free) hemp-seed flavored vodka, ample snacks, and a jovial atmosphere at a tasting event Saturday evening, the distillery still gave the impression of being in a garage. Outside, a bonfire and grill filled the air with smoke.

“We’ll entertain our Alaskan way, some whiskey, some drinks around the fire,” said accounts manager Christiana Grunzke.

The hangar on Shoreline Drive is the second location for the operation formerly known as the Glacier Creek Distillery, which boasts a lineup of 12 different flavored vodkas with Alaska ingredients (including the notorious smoked salmon vodka, which is heavy on the smoke and light on the salmon flavor, makers assured a non-partaking reporter Saturday evening), a whiskey, and a gin, as well as an apple pie moonshine.

The distillery’s owners plan to construct a third building soon, one that, with a combination of outside capital investment, Valley entrepreneurship, and some recent help from the Alaska State Legislature, could become a popular tourist destination.

House Bill 309 — signed in July and formally enacted Oct. 12 — amended Alaska law to create a new category of liquor license specifically for craft distilleries like this one in Wasilla. The legislation was co-sponsored by seven state representatives, among them Rep. Lynn Gattis, whom company officials credited with helping ensure the bill’s passage.

A craft distillery license, which costs $500 every two years, allows distillers to sell up to a gallon of their product to individuals on the premises, and “permit a person to sample up to three ounces total a day of the alcoholic beverage,” according to the bill’s text. More broadly, the bill allows distillers to sell up to one gallon a day to persons on the premises, or five gallons a day “to a person licensed under this title or located in another state or country.”

The bottom line for Alaska and other distilleries: they’re now competitive with breweries like Juneau-based Alaskan Brewing Company, Grunzke said.

“It makes it a destination,” she said. “If you were to think of Alaskan Brewing Company, they have a great destination, and that makes it wonderful for tourists to come in and understand the product better, because who better represents the product than us here at the distillery?”

The distillery has expanded faster than owner Toby Foster ever imagined. He founded the distillery as a family business on a 600-foot property in Palmer in 2005, without running water, electricity, or even a working road (supplies had to be carried or pulled in via sled in the early days). What started as a way to complement an income earned as a pilot has morphed into a full-blown business concern, not only omnipresent in Alaska liquor stores, but now also growing into Western states.

“Because of our relationship with distributors down south, we’re able to get a capital infusion, and we’re looking at some property,” he said.

As a result, the business plans to break ground this spring on a 10,000-square-foot manufactory with an adjoining space set aside for more travel-oriented concerns, Foster said.

“It’s an exciting time for us,” he said. “Fingers crossed.”

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269 or brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com.