Rhode Island distillery blends local flavors to create unique spirits

Transcript

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Amna Nawaz: Some 100 years after prohibition, a distillery in Providence is serving up local liquor.

And as Pamela Watts of “Rhode Island PBS Weekly” found, it’s not just your run-of-the-mill alcohol either. It’s both organic and oceanic.

This story is part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Manya Rubinstein, CEO, ISCO: We’re actually transforming things that came from the ocean and from the land into something that then we’re putting out into the world. It’s this kind of beautiful transfer.

Dan Neff, Co-Founder, ISCO: I remember the first time I went to like my local liquor store, which is the one that I just go to buy wine for my wife. And I was like, oh, that’s my vodka. I made it.

Pamela Watts: Making it in the vast sea of liquor varieties are Dan Neff and Manya Rubinstein. Neff, a Rhode Island native and Rubinstein, a Brown University grad, started ISCO, the industrious spirit company, five years ago.

Manya Rubinstein: We’re on the site of what was the Providence Steel and Iron Company. They made structural and ornamental steel for over 100 years. We really see ourselves as a continuation of that maker community, but in a different way.

Pamela Watts: Way different, as in, what do you get when you mix agriculture and aquaculture, an ocean potion of organically crafted spirits? Oyster vodka is a first of its kind in the nation named Ostreida, and seaweed gin is the newest offering, christened Sea Flow.

ISCO CEO Rubinstein says, sustainably sourced vodka, gin and bourbon as well as a splash of experimental elixirs, allows them to:

Manya Rubinstein: Have some fun, make delicious things, and do something that was not negatively impacting the environment. And then sort of throw it in the creative hopper and you get us.

Pamela Watts: How did you land on the idea of concocting sea brews as liquor?

Manya Rubinstein: We were having some cocktails and we were enjoying some oysters and it suddenly occurred to us that a martini with your oysters is a delight, but why had nobody ever combined oysters and vodka together into one spirit? It just seemed like a no-brainer.

Dan Neff: We hit a good sweet spot with like, oh, the ocean state, ocean stuff, we can make this taste good.

Pamela Watts: Speaking of taste, these outpace even the state’s beloved clam, the quahog, in popularity at many restaurants. hand ISCO is creating another vodka flavor based on a classic Rhode Island staple, pizza strips.

Manya Rubinstein: We basically took all of the herbs and spices that you would use to make a delicious tomato sauce and we put those into our still. We also had special pizza strips made for us.

Pamela Watts: You put pizza strips in the still?

Manya Rubinstein: Yes.

Dan Neff: We did some tasting in the morning. And I was like, oh, we did it. We did it.

Pamela Watts: It smells like bread in here.

Eric Olson, ISCO Distiller: It does.

Pamela Watts: It smells like a bakery.

ISCO distiller Eric Olson is a former brewmaster, and Baby is a custom built 500-gallon hybrid kettle made of copper and brass from Louisville, Kentucky.

So this is a high-end still?

Eric Olson: Very. This is the Ferrari of stills. We started big.

Pamela Watts: Olson says the base spirit starts with regeneratively farmed corn.

Eric Olson: So everything for ISCO products starts as its grain right on the farm and we partner directly with small farms to give us the best organic grain to cook that down.

Pamela Watts: Yeast is added to the still for fermentation, liquids combined in high heat and flavors infused with locally sourced ingredients. The last stage for the spirits, a final filtering of the alcohol for consumption, labeling and distribution.

Dan Neff: Everything’s by hand. We have nothing computer. Everything is analog. Everything we do is a small batch. If you compare us to like a big maker, they’re doing 40,000 gallons a day and we’re doing 500.

Pamela Watts: ISCO toasts itself as the first distillery in Providence since the days of prohibition, which may be true in theory, but, in truth, ever-independent Rhode Island largely ignored the 18th Amendment.

Notorious New England crime boss Raymond L.S. Patriarca is believed to have made bootleg booze in the basement of Camille’s Restaurant in providence’s Federal Hill neighborhood, serving it in coffee cups to mobsters meeting in back alcoves.

But, nowadays, instead of a speakeasy, ISCO’s owners are just glad to have a spirited gathering spot for the community.

For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Pamela Watts in Providence, Rhode Island.