In 2004, Diane Paulson met David Eliasen over vodka martinis, and they discovered that they shared a passion for spirits. They also fell in love and got married.
In 2006, (once again over martinis) they decided that they would like to make their own vodka. They visited distilleries and micro-distilleries all over Oregon trying to learn everything they could about how to make spirits.
The next step for Diane and David was learning how to create a business. They contacted the Small Business Development Center, where they met with business advisor Gary Einhorn periodically for two months. Gary instructed them to get a business manager, which they did. The first thing their manager did was to help them create a business plan. Gary also helped Diane and David become familiar with the nuts and bolts of starting a distillery and helped them plan how to begin those tasks.
Diane and David invested $150,000 of their own money, sold $60,000 in shares, and got a loan from the Southern Oregon Regional Economic Development, Inc., for $150,000. In retrospect, Diane believes that to start a micro-distillery you should secure at least $500,000 so you can focus immediately on distribution and marketing versus raising capital.
The next step was to learn how to make the spirits. Diane and David placed an ad for a master distiller in the American Distiller Institute’s newsletter. Thomas McKenzie, a well-known master distiller from Alabama replied, and in 2008 he flew out to Oregon. Thomas taught Diane and David how to make high quality spirits, and showed them tricks to the distilling process that they could not have learned any other way.
Today, Cascade Peak Spirits is producing high-quality organic spirits that are sold and consumed all over Oregon and California, and Diane and David are working to expand into Arizona and Colorado. They recently won the silver medal at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition for their Organic Nation Vodka.
