The founders of Manifest Distilling weren’t exactly in the mood for vodka by early Thursday morning.
David Cohen, Scott Kennelly and Trey Mills spent much of Wednesday evening bottling the first batch of potato vodka at their Downtown facility.
Sure, it was a milestone among many that come with jumping through months of regulatory hoops — permits, floor plans, leases and more — to make it to that point.
But there was a slight mishap.
The process was going well, the new equipment was working until a gasket blew.
Vodka everywhere. On the walls, on the ceiling, on their clothes. A fine mist of potato vodka filled the air.
Given the situation, though, panic didn’t ensue. Just laughter. “We just all started cracking up,” said Cohen.
Then they grabbed towels to start wiping the place and themselves down before fixing the problem and getting back to work.
The opening of Downtown’s first distillery Sept. 25 should go a little smoother. It will be the first chance for the public to taste the group’s mission to bring small batch vodka to the area, just in time for the next Jacksonville Jaguars home game.
Football fans looking to imbibe will be able to sample Manifest’s initial offering — potato vodka — and buy tailgate packs to make their own mixed drinks.
There will be tours of the 9,000-square-foot facility that features a retail store, tasting area and production facility.
It’s the culmination of almost three years of work started by Cohen, a Jacksonville native who went to Los Angeles to work in documentary filmmaking before returning to his hometown.
His family had a background in the hospitality industry and he was inspired by Matthew Crawford’s “Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work” about the resurgence of craftsmanship and working with your hands.
Distilling was a fit, but it meant a lot of learning.
Cohen went to different distilleries across the country to become knowledgeable through internships and conferences. It’s a hard industry to make money in, he was told. But he’s the type of guy who has to see for himself.
Back in Jacksonville, Cohen was having a difficult time finding partners for the venture. There were a lot of “but no’s” as he calls them, many stemming from federal alcohol laws that restrict commingling of financial interests among producers, distributors and retailers.
That wasn’t the case for Kennelly and Mills, who had many mutual friends with Cohen.
The two also had a natural background for the endeavor — they’re both attorneys with Rogers Towers who work on the firm’s alcohol industry team. That group assists restaurants, bars, breweries, distilleries and others with state and federal rules and regulations.
Kennelly and Mills also worked with local startups and had an interest in Downtown. It was a natural fit.
After applying for their federal permit to distill, there were plenty of time-sensitive requirements to deal with before that application was reviewed. Leases, floor plans, insurance bonds and more had to be taken care of if approval was going to happen.
Cohen said the group knew it wanted to be Downtown. It found its spot at 960 E. Forsyth St. and shares space with another craftsman neighbor, the recently opened Intuition Ale Works brewery and tap room.
In all, Manifest has about 30 mostly local financial partners and an investment of about $1 million, Cohen and Kennelly said.
Manifest has its potato vodka now through work with an Idaho craft distillery. High-proof neutral spirit is batch distilled Downtown and is bottled for retail.
Gin production will begin in the fall, although some small batches have been distilled and barreled via other facilities.
The team went to a Chicago distillery last year to make its first batch of rye whiskey that’s being aged and will available late next year. In-house rye whiskey production begins soon, too.
There’s also a high-rye bourbon that’s been aged 10 years and will be part of a project series expected to be released this year.
For the moment, it’s just vodka. After that gasket blew and the cleanup was finished, the bottling resumed.
At almost 1 a.m. Thursday, they wrapped up their first batch of labeled bottles.
The first dozen were stashed. They’ll be used later for special occasions.
Just not Thursday. Instead, it was a bottle of wine.
At that point, they were tired of vodka.
@writerchapman
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