We always knew we could make pretty great vodka, but the vodka we wanted to make, we couldn’t afford to sell for $20 a bottle. When Grey Goose & Belvedere started selling a ton of vodka at $30 a bottle, we thought, let’s give it a try.

This was 2001. We were two tiny companies, hand-making exquisite brandies & liqueurs in California. Connoisseurs think these brandies are absolutely fabulous, for good reasons: in California, we had access to wonderful fruit & grapes, as well as sophisticated wine-making equipment. Best of all we were free to innovate – but we also had tiny old-fashioned pot stills and did our work informed by centuries of European distillation methods.

We have a lot of experience making really good products out of genuine ingredients. Jorg Rupf, who spent months developing the actual vodkas, is one of the world’s most inventive distillers. But there was another issue – how to exist in the vodka market. A pot still vodka from real fruit costs a lot to make, which meant we wouldn’t be able to run advertisements in magazines or cut deals to get displays in stores. But, we thought, people know a lot more than they used to about alcohol, and they are ready for something real.

So we just tell our story and try to get people to taste the vodkas. We named the vodka because of where we make it (the old Alameda Naval Air Station), and we put it in a simple bottle because all we really care about is the stuff inside the bottle, Hangar One vodka.

For more details, go here.

Or check out Corby Kummer’s 5-page article about us from the Atlantic Monthly. He’s a very good reporter and he spent a long time talking with us at the distillery.