Hand Sanitizer from Ventura Spirits
Ventura Spirits never expected to be in the hand sanitizer business, but then again, we at K&L didn’t either. But we’re happy to have partnered with this great team in order to bring you such an essential item during this time. We now hand sanitizer available on our website—made using the WHO-approved formula by a Los Angeles-based craft distiller who has quickly responded to the increased community need. From Ventura Spirits, you can buy in bulk, getting 36 x 4oz bottles for $125.
We’re big believers in supporting small distilleries and are happy to find an additional way to support them right now, when their stream of income from walk-in and bar traffic has been much reduced. This hand sanitizer is a great way to support a local business while purchasing products that are hard to find right now. It’s a win win!
We wanted to let our readers know a bit more about the folks behind these distilleries, so we caught up with Ventura Spirits to learn what goes on behind the scenes.
OTT: How did you guys get started?VS: Brothers Andrew and Anthony built their first still in their early teens, and became increasingly serious hobbyists, interested in experimenting with uncommon (for distilling) local inputs like prickly pears, strawberries, and seaweed. This sense of curiosity and exploration would become the foundation for the Ventura Spirits brand.
OTT: What’s the philosophy behind your brand?VS: We love to think about what we'd be drinking in California if distilling had been invented here. Most of the spirits we drink have their origins in other parts of the world. So what does it mean to make a “California spirit”? Which regional wild and farmed inputs are especially appropriate for a California distiller, and how can we use them in our products to offer something of interest to the wider world of liquor? An important piece of this is our effort to assert the identity of our spirits as fundamentally agricultural products, and to integrate as best we can into our local agricultural system. You see this in our use of “ugly” strawberries for our strawberry brandy, and with the California-grown apples, potatoes, lemons, and agave that we use in our vodka, limoncello, and agave spirits. For our Wilder Gin, we use a range of native California botanicals. In all of these cases, we're hoping that the liquid is able to communicate some aspect of the particular beauty of our part of the world.
OTT: How has the company changed/been affected during this quarantine time?
VS: Covid has been a challenge for us, as it has been for most businesses. Though our wholesale business has taken a hit, we feel extremely grateful to have been able to continue to operate with all of our staff. California ABC implemented a few different emergency rule changes that have been enormously important for our company. One is the new direct shipping privilege that allows us to mitigate the effects of the closed tasting room by selling and shipping directly to the consumer. In response to overwhelming demand due to the pandemic, state and federal rules changed to allow distilleries like ours to make sanitizer. This has been an important lifeline for us. And we cannot overstate our appreciation and gratitude for the support we have been shown by individual customers, and especially by retailers like K&L, without whom we could not continue to operate.
OTT: How do you make sanitizer? Did you ever think you’d be in the sanitizer biz?
VS: Ha! No, the idea that we'd ever be in the sanitizer business had certainly never occurred to us until recently. But with the support of various regulatory agencies it was relatively straightforward to register with the FDA as an OTC drug manufacturing facility for the purposes of making sanitizer. We make sanitizer according to the World Health Organization recommended recipe. It is an 80% alcohol, liquid, (not gel) sanitizer that can be dispensed directly into the hand or used in a spray bottle for surfaces. The only ingredients other than alcohol are a little bit of glycerin and H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide)—simple, no frills, and hopefully very effective.
OTT: Any advice on how we can help craft distilleries right now?
VS: Keep doing what you're doing! We feel so fortunate to have partners like K&L who really care and are able and willing to continue providing an outlet for our products through these uncertain times.
We invite anyone who is curious to visit our website for more information about our products available through K&L, or to visit our Instagram pages @venturaspirits and @amaroangeleno for photos and cocktail ideas. If anyone is inclined to try something of ours for the first time, Amaro Angeleno and Wilder Gin are probably our most popular, but we are pretty confident that we’ve got something in our lineup that everyone will enjoy, especially heading into summer. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, and of course for your continued support!
Though so many things have changed in unexpected ways recently, one of the highlights has been watching how people and businesses have adapted to help our community members stay safe. A big thanks to Ventura Spirits for helping us stay safe!
- Kate Soto