Michelle, tell us a little about yourself. What is your background.
ML: After my family immigrated to America from Vietnam when I was a child, I grew up locally here in Wilsonville. As a family, we were in the restaurant business for over 20 years. After finishing school at Portland State, I moved down to southern California where I worked in software sales for over 15 years. In 2011, my husband, son and I moved back up to Oregon to be closer to family and grow the family business.
Can you tell us what was your vision for Vinn Distillery?
ML: Vinn Distillery was founded by our father, Phan Ly, in 2009. His vision was to introduce Baijiu to the US market. Having owned restaurants that had liquor licenses to serve cocktails, he found that baijiu was not available in any liquor stores in Oregon. He started Vinn Distillery to fill that niche. The other vision was to have something the whole family could work together to build. We all worked well in the restaurant business and he wanted another venture that would keep us working together as a family. We lost our father in 2012 so the vision of our family today is to help realize our father’s dream.
Sorry to hear Michelle, but I can see you are doing your father proud. Can you tell us the symbolism or the background of the name Vinn?
ML: Vinn is the shared middle name of the 5 siblings. Our father wanted something that represented his children.
What obstacles or challenges did you see when first getting involved in this project. Was it more of a hobby or a business venture?
ML: This venture started as a hobby for our father, after he retired from the restaurant, but wanted to share his family baijiu recipe with family and friends. While we experienced the typical obstacles and challenges like most start-up businesses, the biggest challenge was introducing a spirit that is virtually unknown in the US market. Baijiu is very well known in Asia. In fact, baijiu is the most popular spirit in the world but very few people in the US market are familiar with baijiu unless they have visited China or friends or family has brought it back from Asia.
Michelle, what has been most rewarding about this experience?
ML: We have had so many memorable and rewarding experiences throughout this process. And we’ve met some amazing people in the industry. What we’ve found particularly great in this industry is how enthusiastically other craft distilleries and vendors/partners have been willing to help us without any expectation of getting anything in return. This has really inspired us to ‘pay-it-forward’ so when anyone approaches us for advice or help, we are more than happy to do so. Another rewarding part has been to see how open consumers have been to simply trying something new and unique.
What expressions do you currently produce?
ML: We currently create 4 products:
Vinn Baijiu – This is our flagship product that we have been producing from a family recipe for over 7 generations. We use 100% brown rice.
Vinn Vodka – This was the first rice vodka produced and bottled in the USA and made with 100% white rice.
Vinn Whiskey – This is essentially baijiu aged in an American Oak barrel. This is a blend of brown and white rice.
Vinn Blackberry Liqueur – We’re really excited about this product. It’s made with 100% Oregon blackberry and used our rice vodka as a base.
How is your whiskey different from all the other craft distillery small batch whiskey?
ML: Vinn Whiskey was a bit of an unintentional creation. Our oldest sister – Lien Ly – who is also our master distiller, had bought two new baby barrels at a garage sale. She had just finished a batch of baijiu (baijiu is similar to white whiskey) so she filled the barrels with it. A year later, she had us sample the golden liquid. Our eyes lit up and we were so all so pleasantly surprised at the flavor and how well it had turned out – that’s when we realized we had our next product.
The key difference is that our Vinn Whiskey is made with 100% rice; which isn’t common in whiskey making in the US. We also make our whiskey from scratch (grain to bottle) and use new American oak barrels.
Does the geographic location and weather in Oregon affect the maturation process of your spirits?
ML: This is a tough question to answer because we feel we are still in the ‘experimental’ process with our whiskey. We don’t have the data to determine how the weather in Oregon affects maturation process of our whiskey.
Fair enough Michelle, we can always follow up with you in the near future. Do you have any role models in this industry?
ML: There are so many amazing passionate people in this industry. We would love to follow in the footsteps of other craft distilleries that started small like us and developed a nationwide following.
You seem to have a very close knit family, how do you think that relationship with your family is (if it all) is translated in your expressions?
ML: We are a close knit family – we will credit that to our parents and the experience of immigrating to America and growing up in a new and wonderful environment to all of us. Growing up, our parents made extreme efforts to keep us working and playing together. We spent so many countless days and nights working together in the restaurant! And surprisingly, after all of that, we all actually still like and respect each other. Vinn Baijiu is a recipe brought over from Asia that has been in the Ly family for over 7 generations. Vinn Vodka, Vinn Whiskey and Vinn Blackberry Liqueur are products created by our younger generation. We wanted to create products that we all enjoyed.
Is there a specific flavor profile you were going for when making the Vinn Whiskey?
ML: We were experimenting with trying to craft a profile that would blend eastern and western notes. Vinn Whiskey is distilled from 100% rice; a blend of brown and white rice aged in American Oak barrels. Now that we’ve been at it for 3 years, we will continue to experiment with different barrels, new and used.
Michelle, we can’t wait to see what other whiskey profiles are in your future. Where do you see your distillery 5 years from now?
ML: We hope to see Vinn products distributed through many states in the USA and have released a few more different styles of whiskey and baijiu.
Do you remember your first dram. Is there a story behind it?
ML: I don’t quite recall exactly when I had my first dram, but because my father has been distilling for himself since before I can remember, I’m pretty sure it was before I would want to admit! I’ve have always enjoyed whiskey. Even more so now that I am part of the industry. There are so many great whiskies that have been released by craft distilleries. It’s a good time to be in this industry.
How do you think next year will go and what are your hopes?
ML: We’re encouraged with the initial reception of our newer products in some fun cocktails, like Vinn Blackberry Lemonade and the Shanghai Mule.
In the upcoming year, we’d love to introduce some more new cocktails and release another more traditional baijiu that will be 106 proof.
