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Friday, Jul. 10, 1998
Texan taking on giants of vodka
Low-budget Tito's Handmade Vodka attracting critical acclaim
Associated Press
AUSTIN - Texas' only licensed distillery looks like something an outlaw bootlegger threw together with a shot-glass sized budget to elude the feds out in the boonies.
And that's part of what gives Tito Beveridge and the critically acclaimed vodka produced at his Fifth Generation Distillery its charm.
Located on a patch of mesquite-filled prairie just south of Austin, not far from a few head of grazing cattle, Beveridge's operation looks like a rundown warehouse, barely bigger than a trailer home.
Beveridge, 36, whose name couldn't be more appropriate, is a native Texan who fits the Lone Star image, having worked as a geophysicist in charge of a seismic dynamite crew looking for oil in South America.
He wears cowboy hats, jeans, boots and goes everywhere with his yellow lab named Dog Jo.
He built his 995-square-foot office and factory himself after using about $130,000 in savings from his work in South America and $70,000 on 18 credit cards to launch his distillery just over a year ago.
If the top brass making Stoli and Absolut vodkas were to venture to Beveridge's operation, they would probably give it a good look, fight to hold back the laughter and write off Tito's Handmade Vodka as a surefire thing to fail any day now.
But while the odds are long - just four brands have a stranglehold on more than 50 percent of the vodka market - demand for Tito's Handmade Vodka appears to be growing.
Numerous critics have praised its crisp flavor and smooth finish, calling it a sipping vodka on par with powerhouses such as Smirnoff, Stoli and Absolut. Tito's is also priced about two dollars per bottle less than those brands.
``Tito's Handmade Vodka can go head-to-head with any of the world's greats and not break a sweat,'' according to ``Nightclub and Bar Magazine'' in a recent article.
After a year on the market and having been pushed primarily by a Texas-only wine distributor, Tito's is now being placed in retail liquor outlets by Glazer's Distributors, which serves Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, Arkansas and Missouri.
Tito's Handmade Vodka is available in 210 liquor stores across the state as well as several bars, said Stacy Starr, state marketing manager for Glazer's.
``His product is outstanding as far as clean taste goes,'' Starr said. ``It is tough, especially for small operations with little resources. Tito has to play off of the loyalty of Texans and get it going here and then move out to the outlying states.''
If Beveridge can outlast the last distiller in Texas - Bay River Co., which survived 10 years before quitting in 1988 - he will have certainly done so from humble beginnings.
He didn't even have an air conditioner for much of the first year he was in business, much to the chagrin of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents who would sweat in the summer heat while doing their paperwork after random inspections.
Beveridge likes to call his operation a ``microdistillery'' along the lines of the microbreweries that have sprung up all over Texas in recent years.
``I'm trying to return the taste to vodka,'' Beveridge said. ``For years, people thought beer only tasted like Budweiser or Miller, until the microbreweries popped up and started turning out some really diverse-tasting stuff.
``I consider myself a microdistillery, and my vodka, made in small batches, achieves a clean, flavorful taste that the big-batch vodkas don't have.''
Beveridge and partner and former geologist co-worker Tim Scanlon, 40, are producing as much vodka as they can to meet demand.
To help keep things moving, they have stopped labeling the bottles themselves and now pay residents of the Austin State School for the mentally retarded to do the job.
``As he can do it, he needs to put in a bottling line and go from there,'' Starr said. ``Everything he is doing is handcrafted, but he'll never be able to get bigger unless he can put in a bottling line.
``There's only so many bottles you can fill and so many labels you can put on bottles in a day.''
The distillery used to heat and separate the alcohols in Beveridge's vodka looks like something put together with materials from a going-out-of-business sale. The bottling tank is a converted restaurant kitchen air vent.
The distillery these days, however, is a touch more sophisticated than what was used to cook up the first batch: an old beer keg on a boiler heated by a used catfish fryer.
``If I didn't do it the way I do it, it wouldn't have the same flavor, character and drinking experience,'' Beveridge said.
``I may not have money for marketing and a huge company pushing my product, but I do have really good juice in a bottle.''Post your comments about local news eventsFront Page || Main Index || News || Business || Texas || South Texas Outdoors || Birdwatching || Sports || Entertainment || Selena || Education || South Texas Attractions || World Wide Web