2 weeks Ago By Jay Gabler
DULUTH — Vikre Distillery began with a dinner-table conversation. Emily Vikre's mother pointed out that if Swedes could use local ingredients to brew a distinctive whiskey, the same principle should apply to other places outside of Scotland. "We fell in love with the idea," Joel Vikre, Emily's husband, told the News Tribune in 2013.
The couple moved from Boston to Emily's hometown and put their life savings into a dream: a distillery that would use Lake Superior water and local botanicals to craft spirits with a distinctively Duluth flavor. ADVERTISEMENT "We knew from the start that what we wanted to do was make incredible heirloom-quality spirits that were really inspired by a passion for flavor and a passion for this community," Emily Vikre said earlier this month, sitting inside the couple's Canal Park distillery. "We didn't have any expectation of being able to have a public face," remembered Joel.
"It was just manufacturing and it was just for sale through distributors." That changed with a 2014 law permitting Minnesota craft distilleries to open cocktail rooms, selling sips of their own product on-site. In November of that year, Vikre became the first Minnesota distillery to take advantage of that law.
Du Nord, in Minneapolis, followed suit in early 2015. "All these people would show up," remembered Joel. "Every other week it was somebody from a new agency, and they'd say, 'We think that we're supposed to regulate you.
What are you doing?' Because they'd never seen a craft distillery before." Ten years later, Vikre has a very public face indeed. The cocktail room, entered by way of Jeno Paulucci's former parking space in the onetime Chun King food factory, is one of Duluth's essential destinations for visitors who enjoy a cocktail or a mocktail.
Vikre also distributes its products across the Midwest, where the distillery is best known for its three signature gins: Juniper, Cedar and Spruce. "Vikre’s gins aren’t attempts to simply duplicate what has been done before," wrote Gin Magazine in a 2019 feature highlighting the originality of the distillery's Lake Superior products. "You can look at the world from outer space, and you can pinpoint Duluth," Emily pointed out.
"It's very special that way, and so it's fun to be able to give people that sense (that) 'I'm getting to have a little sip of Duluth, even if I can't make it up there for a weekend visit right now.'" ADVERTISEMENT The past decade has seen an explosion of craft breweries, which became so proportionately numerous in Duluth that former Mayor Don Ness proclaimed the city the "Craft Beer Capital of Minnesota." Vikre, though, has remained the only local distillery with a cocktail room.
That may be because compared to launching a brewery, opening a distillery requires a greater investment without any guarantee of greater profit. "Other states have laws that are much looser with what they allow craft distilleries, or distilleries under a certain size, to sell directly," Emily pointed out. "It's very different from the craft breweries .
.. we're not allowed any self-distribution.
" "The (investment) required for a startup distillery, especially if you want to make whiskey that's aged properly, is pretty high," said Kevin Evans of the Duluth Whiskey Project. He has "barrels of whiskey without any revenue from sitting at the distillery for the last seven years. That's a lot of money tied up.
" Vikre also makes whiskey, though its clear spirits can move to market more rapidly. Evans, whose craft distillery cocktail room will become Duluth's second when it opens later this year in Lincoln Park, has enjoyed a supportive partnership with Vikre since he arrived in the city around the same time as Emily and Joel did. "A year before I moved to Duluth, I emailed (then-Mayor) Don (Ness) and said, 'I'm interested in starting a craft distillery,'" Evans remembered.
"'Who do I need to network with?' He connected me." Evans and the Vikres joined forces. "He actually helped us way back from the beginning," said Joel.
"Helped us do the plumbing in here and helped run the still. Then he started his brand, and he's been distilling his product here for years and years now. We're very excited to see him stepping out on his own.
" Even with the Duluth Whiskey Project opening its own facility, both businesses expect their synergy to continue. ADVERTISEMENT "I think most craft distillers would feel this way, that there is such concentration in the larger companies that we really don't do anything other than help each other," said Evans. "If you can get people interested in trying craft spirits, they're more likely to try other craft spirits.
" The Vikres also partnered with another prominent Duluth craft beverage maker, Bent Paddle Brewing, which opened in 2013. Initially "they would do the brewing part of our process," explained Joel. "First you brew to make what we call distiller's beer, then you distill it.
" While Vikre eventually developed its own brewing capacity, the Vikres' personal relationship with the Bent Paddle owners is still tight. "They remained some of our best friends," said Joel. Laura Mullen, one of Bent Paddle's four founders, said her own story is similar to Emily Vikre's in that both were returning to their roots.
"Emily's from Duluth, I'm from Duluth, so it was like coming home (and) bringing husbands, bringing other business partners to Duluth to craft a community in our hometown." Mullen and Emily Vikre were among eight Duluth women entrepreneurs who penned a 2023 statement alerting the public to the challenges they face running small businesses. "The public perception is that people are enthusiastically consuming our goods and handing us cash to add to our Scrooge McDuck piles of money," reads the statement.
"They don't see that the vast majority of our income flies right back out of our till." "We (are) daily drinking out of a firehose of issues and changes," said Mullen. "It's pretty exhausting.
We just wanted people to not put entrepreneurship on this pedestal." ADVERTISEMENT Vikre hand-numbers some of their whiskey bottles. That helps consumers understand the difference between their product and competing whiskeys that might come from huge corporate facilities but also claim a "craft" distinction.
"We've joked about having a little handwritten scroll attached to each bottle that you can unroll to see the whole story," said Emily. The distillery's practices and policies came up for discussion in April 2023, when Vikre employees organized an effort to join a hospitality union. In an election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board, however, the majority of employees voted not to unionize.
In the wake of that drive, said Emily, "We recommitted to our ongoing efforts to make sure ...
that we have a variety of avenues for people to have a seat at the table or feel like their voices are heard." Anders Bloomquist, an organizer who helped the Vikre effort, told the newspaper Labor World that "many people had shared deep concerns about the ability to have a stable workplace situation at Vikre, and we’re hoping management heard that." "One of the things that I think makes us who we are, and that we love so much, is we have the most amazing creative staff who are artists and musicians, and have these really robust community lives outside of work," said Emily.
That makes for scheduling challenges, she said, complicated by the seasonality of Duluth's hospitality industry. Pandemic closures were another challenge. Vikre's adaptations included making to-go cocktail kits, offering outdoor seating and producing hand sanitizer the company gave away for free.
At a time when sanitation essentials became scarce, the distillery saw locals line up to take advantage of the offer. ADVERTISEMENT "When we came in with that idea, it took a day for our staff to figure out how to make it happen," said Emily. "Challenges and the wonderful things always kind of go hand in hand.
" As the company moves toward the conclusion of its 10th anniversary year, it's celebrating in a range of ways. The Vikres released their oldest whiskey ever, celebrated summer with a strawberry rhubarb gin, and unveiled a "greatest hits" cocktail menu bringing back some staff favorites from past offerings. Recently, Vikre convened 10 bartenders from across the state for a "cocktail camp" to brainstorm a new seasonal menu and to create content for what Emily describes as a "mini reality TV series.
" The owners don't pretend they can see the future, particularly when it comes to their rented space in the shadow of the Aerial Lift Bridge. "We love this space and we love being by the bridge," said Joel, pointing out that the west side of Lake Avenue is zoned for manufacturing. That allows Vikre to operate their business in the heart of Duluth's tourist district.
Even so, not having a space owned by the company limits Vikre's flexibility and ability to plan for the long term. For now, they're moving full steam ahead at what used to be Paulucci's place. "It has made Canal Park cooler," said Mullen about Vikre's cocktail room.
"Being near the water, and showing how beautiful and artistic and authentic Duluth can be in the form of a delicious cocktail." "We knew coming into it that was a wonderful, natural place to do it because of the lake and the woods," said Emily, "but it's also been a great place to do it from a human perspective." ADVERTISEMENT Emily is now the partner who largely runs the company, with Joel focusing on his fabricating work with companies including Cedar + Stone Nordic Sauna.
The couple will certainly, however, need to draw on Joel's crafting expertise if they are to realize one of their wildest dreams: the world's largest shotski. To set the record, Duluth's shotski — a ski with small glasses mounted along its length, raised for a number of people to simultaneously take shots — will have to be over a half-mile long. "It's a logistical nightmare," said Emily, but planning is in place for a shotski running along the Lakewalk.
The Vikres may have plenty of time to plan. In the world of spirits, a decade is a blink of an eye. "Some of these places have been around the 1500s," said Emily, referring to distilleries still in operation, "so we will be (around for a long time), too.
" "Will we?" asked Joel, grinning as his voice rose in surprise. "Five hundred years from now?" asked Emily. "Oh, yeah.
".
