In Black America; DU NORD, with Chris Montana

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is in Black America. There are 1600 microdicellaries right now, and one of them is Black O. That's not anything that I have any pride about. I think that's a shame. And there are a number of reasons why that may be the case, but one of them is that the industry has never looked that open to women and people of color. You don't see yourself reflected in it, and so you don't think that it's there for you. You don't think of it as a career choice, you don't think of it as a business opportunity. And I can't, you know, I don't know that there's anything that I can do that's going to make a slew of Black entrepreneurs show up and decide that they want to make whiskey.

I mean, that's on them, but what I can do is I can open the door for a few people to get behind the scenes and see what the process is like and build skills. Because we don't want to, and again, we encourage women and minorities to apply for our jobs. That doesn't mean that they're going to get hired, right? We're going to hire the best person for the job every single time. Chris Montana, owner and chief distiller of the North Cran spirits located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 2013, Montana woke up one morning and decided he wanted to open the distillery. He had been making homebrewed beer for 10 years. Also, he wanted to begin a family business that would bring together his wife, Chanel's rule of upbringing and his urban experience growing up in Minneapolis. According to the American Craft Spheres Association at August 2016, there were 13,015 craft distilleries in this country.

That number has grown to 1,600 according to Montana, and he is the only African American craft distiller in the country. In 2016, the industry employed over 12,000 full-time workers and investment reached 300 million dollars in 2015. Also that same year, retail sales reached 2.4 billion dollars. I'm Johnny Ohenson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, the North Crab Spheres with Chris Montana, In Black America. You know, I've been homebrewing for a long time, making beer, and I thought that I was going to do that. You know, in the back of my head, I was like, maybe I'll start a brewery one of these days. But here's the thing about Minnesota, there is a brewery it seems on every other block. When I was looking at, you know, the type of beer that I liked at that time, people didn't really like. I liked beer a little less alcohol in it. You could have maybe two or three before you were on the table, and people were brewing this stuff that was, you know, all the hops you could pile in, they were so bitter, 7,

8, 9% alcohol, that's what people wanted. And, you know, so that wasn't me, and I wasn't going to do that. But what I saw, is I saw that there was a bill that was passed up here, which is generally known as a surly bill, which is a brewery up here. But there was a provision in that law that established micro-dustilleries and lowered the fees to start up. In 2013, Chris Montana and his wife Chanel, with a $60,000 investment, opened up Denard Crab Spheres and Cocktail Room in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and since then, they've been developing a war-winning experience. On January 9, 2015, they opened the first Cocktail Room in the Twin Cities, serving on the Spheres they make from scratch on site. Cocktail rooms are bars attached to local distilleries. Born in Indianapolis, Montana moves to Minnesota when he was eight. He grew up in seven different neighborhoods in Minneapolis. He earned an English degree from the University of the District of Columbia, and a law degree

from Hamlin University. Still, a licensed attorney. But his passion is making booze. Their line of spirits include vodka, gin, and a coffee liqueur, and title, Caffe Frida, named after his high school teacher. During Super Bowl 52 week, I had an opportunity to stop by his distillery. You know, the funny thing is, it's part of it. So the Minnesota State motto is, let's all do Nord. And we thought everyone would know that. We actually named one of our products, like 12 to Nord, and apparently nobody knows that. Certainly nobody in the state of Minnesota, and I can't expect anybody else to know it. But we tried. I was just saying, tell us about growing up in different neighborhoods in Minneapolis. Well, I've lived in, I feel like I've lived in most of Minneapolis by this point. You know, as a kid, we moved just by every year. And you know, I loved Minneapolis. I should say it grew on me. I was born in Indianapolis. And I moved to Minnesota when I was about eight.

And I moved here with a jean jacket. It was about as heavy a coat as I had. And I moved here in August of 1991. And just a few days later, you know, a couple months later, we had one of the largest snow storms that the state had ever seen, and Halloween, and there was snow up above my head. And I'd never seen anything like that before. But it grew on me, I've lived other places, but this is home. I love it here. Understand you attended the University of the District of Columbia? I did. I did. I started my undergrad at the University of Minnesota, and where I majored in just about everything. I didn't really know what I was doing. And I took a break. I worked for a while, and I went back to UDC, which is an HBC in Washington, DC. And you obtained a law degree? I did. Oddly enough from a law school that no longer exists in its original form. I went to Hamlin University, which has since merged with another law school.

But while it was still just Hamlin University, that's where I got my law degree. Did you meet your wife, Chanel? Why you in Washington? Or in Minneapolis? No, that was while we were here. Okay. She was an intern in the Party Affairs Department at the DFL, the DFL as a Democratic Party in Minnesota. And I was a college Democrat's statewide president, which, you know, it might sound important. It absolutely was not. I think they had an extra room, and so they just gave me an office, and she was down the hall. And she actually, she walked by me one day, and I was in a meeting, and I whispered to a friend of mine that I thought she was attractive, and I was told that I shouldn't say those types of things in a business setting, and I wouldn't ask her if she thought that it was inappropriate. And she looked at me like I was a dumbest person in the world. But somehow, you know, eventually, I got around to being able to hang out with her. What, seven years later?

Oh, wow, that was, what year is it, 2018, it's 14 years ago, yeah. What sparked that initial interest in the law? You know, for me, and I still have this impression or this feeling of the law, is that the law is the equalizer, and you know, it doesn't always work out that way, and we know that. But it should be that we're all equal before the law, and the law should treat every person and every situation roughly the same. And that's attractive to me, because again, you know, that hasn't always been my experience in my life, but it is what I would like the world to be. And so going to law school and pursuing that and learning more about it just made sense to me. What was it like being a congressional aid? Well, it was kind of, you know, I jokingly say it was my own little version of Mr. Smith goes to Washington.

I got out there and I thought we were going to do so much good, and I thought that we were so important. And this is a freshman office, Congressman Ellison, when he first got into office. I was his field director. I worked on his campaign and went out to help start up his office. And I quickly found out that we were not a big deal, and we were not going to get much done that we wanted to do anyway, because we were, you know, he was a freshman member. He was a high profile freshman member, but he still was a freshman. And they don't let you just walk in and take over the place. So you know, the other side of it, if I'm being completely honest here, is that I wasn't very good at it. You know, at that point, I still hadn't finished my undergrad degree. You know, I was young and I had all the ideals, but I was missing some of the hard skills. And so I was out there thinking that I wanted to work for, particularly for the people of Minnesota. And I learned that that's not what DC is about. And what it is about is you've got to play the game, everyone's always looking for a new

job. It's not about the people you thought you were going to represent. It's about, you know, the title that you can earn so that way you can leave DC and make some real money. And that just wasn't what I went out there for. And so it wasn't the job for me, ultimately. How is it that five years ago that you just wake up one morning and decide that you want to start making booze? Close. Pretty close. Pretty close. You know, I'd been home brewing for a long time, making beer. And I thought that I was going to do that. You know, in the back of my head, I was like, maybe I'll start a brewery one of these days. But here's the thing about Minnesota. There is a brewery. It seems on every other block. And when I was looking at, you know, the type of beer that I liked at that time, people didn't really like. I liked beer a little less alcohol in it. You could have maybe two or three before you were under the table. But people were brewing this stuff that was, you know, all the hops you could pile in. They were so bitter, seven, eight, nine percent alcohol.

That's what people wanted. And, you know, so that wasn't me. And I wasn't going to do that. But what I saw is I saw that there was a bill that was passed up here, which is generally known as a surly bill, which is a brewery up here. But there was a provision in that law that established micro distilleries and lowered the fees to start up. And I thought, nobody's doing this in the city. And my wife is from Central Minnesota and grew up on a farm that's still an operating farm and they grow corn. So I thought, we've got the farm. And, you know, I already know half of the process because I know how to make beer. I can learn the rest and we should do this. Why not? So I had that idea in February of 2013. And by August, we had a lease on our current location. It was about that process, obviously, you had to go out and find a building. But also, you had to go out and find and purchase the equipment. Oh, yeah.

And both are Goldilocks issues. Okay. With the location, I mean, distilleries are usually close to where they get the grain. Exactly. So you put it in the country, stick it in the middle of a major metropolitan area. So that's problem number one. And number two is that if we are going to be in a major metropolitan area, then we need to have access to that area. So it doesn't make sense for us to be in an industrial park that nobody can find. We want to be close to people because we want people to interact with our brand. That's the only way we're cutting through. We don't have a millions of dollars that the big guys have to market and all that. We need, we need FaceTime. So finding, I mean, we went to countless properties all over the place in the suburbs and the city. I wanted to put it in the city, but it took a long time to find that on the equipment side of things. Same problem. And this is one of the, you know, at the time I was very proud of it if I was advising somebody else to do this, I wouldn't tell them to do it the way I did.

But I started this, the business with $60,000. And that was a loan from a community development organization. It was not enough money to start a distillery. Just if we're building the record here, nobody should do that. But what it meant for me is, you know, I didn't have to, I didn't have a lot of the support that would have come if I had the money to buy the big boys equipment. So I had to go learn all this stuff myself. So a lot of the stuff that we have in there, I've either built or modified and had to learn the process behind that. Otherwise we wouldn't have been able to start the place. What did you decide to first start distilling when you opened the distillery? Well I thought that I was opening a whiskey distillery. That's what I told Chanel, my wife, and what I told everybody else is that we're going to make whiskey and I had all these plans. Turns out whiskey takes time and during that time people want to get their bills paid. And so we had to go back a little bit and think we need to make something that is unaged.

And vodka was the obvious choice. There wasn't a craft vodka in Minnesota at the time. And I had been making spirits for a while trying out different bases and trying out different things. And I had arrived at a recipe and a process that I liked and that other people seemed to like. And so that made sense. The gin on the other hand, that was something that, I suppose at the time I took a little more pride in, although I would say now that was a little misguided, but because with the gin it's a wide open plate. And you can put anything you want in it really as long as you waive the juniper berry at it at some point you can call it gin. And so that product came about because my wife is a gin drinker. I was not. I had to get educated. I had to go out and drink a bunch of gin, which I know sounds rough. But for someone who doesn't drink gin, it wasn't the best.

But that's how we started with our first two. You mentioned craft vodka. What does that particular term mean? You could be in an argument for days with people trying to figure out what that term means. And particularly the word craft. Exactly. And you know, that's the vodka settled. Craft is not. Okay. To some people, it means some version of it came from a small company and that's good enough. For other people, they would look at, you know, a Jack Daniels and say, well, how is that not craft? Just because they're large doesn't mean that it's not a craft product. For me, craft means that you made it. And if you can expand on that, that it bears some signature of the maker. And, you know, for we have, we have a number of shops around here. There's some guys with really big personalities. They make really big spirits, right? High alcohol, high flavor. At some other people who, you know, you can, when you try their products, you say, I,

that makes sense to me because I know that guy and I know that, that, that that's his interest, right? It's not so much that you're just preparing, you know, marshmallow vodka for the market. It's that you're making something that you, that you are adding to the marketplace that was not already there. And that's what craft means to me. But, you know, get, get two other distillers on here. You'll get probably three, three more opinions. The first product was vodka in which you named after the state model. Your second product was gin, and you named after F. Scott's Fitzgerald. Why? Well, I'm an English major, and I don't use that a ton. But I, you know, this side of paradise and great Gatsby, I like those books. And those are F. Scott Fitzgerald's book, as it, as it happens, and, and we are Minnesota files. And so we, you know, we, we have a lot of these Minnesota references, or we try to have them. And F. Scott Fitzgerald, well, he was a bit of a drunk actually, but he, he enjoyed his gin.

He thought that when you drink gin that people couldn't smell it on you, which is obviously very wrong, oddly enough, he, he didn't really like Minnesota that much. He's going to see he could get out of it. But, but he's dead now. And so he can't argue the fact. And so yeah, we, we used him on our gin, and, you know, we, we later made a, a coffee lacour that we named after a high school teacher of mine. You know, we try to keep things a little more grounded. Understand. Who came up with the packaging, the label for your, your, your products? I can't take any credit there. That's, uh, so that was a collaboration between my wife and a guy named Chris Frost, who now is out in, in California. And the idea that we had at the beginning, we thought, and this turned out to be true, but we thought that, that women were going to be more attracted to the craft's spirits industry than beer. Beer hasn't been particularly open to women. Some of the marketing has, it almost seems like they're trying to chase women away. And we wanted to create a product and, and really accompany in a, in a vibe that, uh,

women would feel safe in, and, and feel a track of two. And so one of the instructions that we gave to our designer was we like kind of a 1920s, something you'd see in an apothecary type of a feel, but we also wanted to have a feminine touch to it. And he came up with a number of different labels, and my wife primarily was the one who, who dealt with this and, and settled on our label. I love our labels. I think they stand out, and I think they represent our product and our brand well. But that was almost entirely in my wife's Chanel. I understand. Is there a difference in selling your product in the cocktail room versus a package store? Oh, absolutely. And the difference is dollars. States that do not have cocktail rooms definitely put a strain on distilleries. Distributions is not an easy thing, but there's only so much shelf space. And you know, you get to a point where you're at saturation, which a lot of our states

are. I mean, Minnesota is near there. Texas certainly is, and some of the coasts states are where if you come to market with a brand new bottle, that has to displace somebody else's bottle. Okay. And why do they get rid of that stuff if it's selling just to sell yours? And so there are a number of distilleries that have no path to market. The only way that they get it is if people start asking for it, and people start asking for it because they can go to your site, they can learn about it, they can see how you make it, and they can taste it. So for Minnesota, we didn't actually have a cocktail room law when we started. When we started, because we were in the first wave of distilleries in Minnesota, it was illegal to have a cocktail room. So we built a distillery for wholesale, but we worked very hard, and again, I give more credit to my wife on this. We worked very hard at the state legislature to get that law passed so we could have a cocktail room. And that now is the reason why DeNord continues to exist. Without the cocktail room, I don't know that we'd be here.

And it's a fantastic opportunity for people to come in. I'm usually, you know, I try to stick around as much as I can. I have three kids, and so I need to go home at some time. But I get to meet people who are interested in what we're doing. People are very grateful that we're even there, which is one of the most shocking things of owning this business is how the community, how the neighborhood is so happy that it's there, and they view it as an asset. So the cocktail room is fantastic, and you know, you can sell a bottle of vodka at wholesale for around $11, but you could make over $100 on it if you sell it in your own space. So it's a very big difference. Understand that you were one of the first ones to go through the licensing process of people knocking on your door for advice and direction. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And, you know, this is one of those things that, you know, people eventually get tired of because every other day somebody's walking in and saying, Hey, I want to do what you do. And can you basically walk me through the entire process?

And, you know, you have to make time for that. You have to, because there are people who made time for me. And I, you know, I've been to probably north of 70 distilleries at this point, but there were a lot of them that I went to before I started up. I was looking at other operations of different sizes. And a lot of people opened their doors to me and were willing to sit down and talk to me about what they do and about what they wish they had done differently. And so, you know, you can't just, you know, you can't just take from the well, you have to put some back. And so if anybody comes to me and they want some advice or, you know, a little bit of assistance here or there, I'm happy to give it. That's not to say that I'm going to do everything for them, you know, people have to do their own homework. And I can point you in some directions and I'll help you where I can. But yeah, it was, it was a period of time where there were probably five different people a day that would come in and just want to talk to me about starting the business. And at that rate, you can hardly run your own business.

Understand that you are now producing an Ethiopian whiskey. How did you come to that? Yeah, we're working on that. You know, this is one of the, one of those things that I think is missing in the market. And it's not that the market is missing Ethiopian whiskey, right? It is. But what the market is missing is just diversity in products generally. You know, there is a lot of taking a different angle on something that's already there, right? I'm going to take this whiskey and I'm going to add quinoa to it and see what that does. And, you know, that's interesting and I have no problem with that and I'll do that myself. But you're still making the same basic product. I've been interested in is making something that's completely different and, you know, we have a, just as a part of, you know, being the only black owned and operated distillery in the country. You know, I understand that there are sometimes voices that don't get listened to quite as much. And so we're always on the lookout for what are those things and our distillery is sitting right next to an Ethiopian bakery.

And the gentleman who runs that, he found out that, you know, okay, there's going to be a distillery next to him and he wanted to talk to me about it and, you know, he said that, you know, distilled spirits back where he was from, that there was this product called the Otake and it wasn't mass produced. It's only made by almost entirely women over campfires in clay pots, but it's nearly ubiquitous. In the country, at least, it's everywhere and no two distillations taste the same. And he brought me a bottle of it and it was some of the weirdest stuff I'd ever taste it. And I love that. You can't find it anywhere on the market and that's exactly what craft should do. Crafted distillery should make weird alcohol, right? Because the big guys make all the normal stuff. And so I said, let's do this. And we've been working through some of the kinks in that, the original recipe that I was able to find was not in a language that I speak and referred to, you know, the numbers of bundles of wood that you would need to burn to get this product done.

And I was like, well, that's not how we do things here. We're an electric distillery. But we've eventually figured it out and we're going to be importing some different flowers and things from Ethiopia to produce this spirit. And I don't expect that we're going to take over the spirit's market with Ethiopian whiskey. But we have a significant East African population in Minnesota. And their needs have never really been addressed because no one's been looking at them. And that's in craft beer, that's in craft alcohol period. And so, you know, we're happy to be partnering with them to produce something that reminds them of home. Chris, why is it important for you to have more minorities and women and people of color involved in this industry? There are 1,600 microdustilleries right now and one of them is black owned. That's not anything that I have any pride about. I think that's a shame. And there are a number of reasons why that may be the case.

But one of them is that the industry has never looked that open to women and people of color. You don't see yourself reflected in it. And so you don't think that it's there for you. You don't think of it as a career choice, you don't think of it as a business opportunity. And I can't, you know, I don't know that there's anything that I can do that's going to make a slew of black entrepreneurs show up and decide that they want to make whiskey. I mean, that's on them. But what I can do is I can open the door for a few people to get behind the scenes and see what the process is like and build skills. Because we don't want to, and again, we encourage women and minorities to apply for our jobs. That doesn't mean that they're going to get hired, right? We're going to hire the best person for the job every single time. But it just happens to be that a lot of people don't apply because they don't think that it's a welcoming environment. And so we make sure that people know that the door is open. And if they want to learn about this process that they can do it at the Nord and my ultimate,

what I would love, my ultimate goal, is to have people come work for me for a little while, learn a few things, leave, and then go become my competitor. Because that's how this starts, right? And it's going to be a slow burn. I don't expect that number, I don't expect us to have anything close to our representation in the population in this industry anytime soon. But we already have created a number of people who are marketable in this industry. And could one day take the skills that they have to a bank and say, I'm ready to do my own job. And you also get different attitudes on things. And I won't completely bore you on this. But the spirits industry, particularly when it comes to women, the alcohol industry outside of perhaps wine, has not done a very good job of being receptive to the interests of women and when they put images out there to sell products.

And in many ways, a lot of it is just flat out repulsive. And when you run a company that has a number of women in decision making positions, both on the, you know, the nitty-gritty they're covered in fermented corn because they're making booze or because you're sitting down with them to talk about how you want to market this product, how you want to sell this product, you take a different, a different angle. And it keeps you from being that person. And I don't think that we would be that person anyway, I hope that we're above that. But when you have more voices in the room, you win. Chris Montana, owner and head distiller of the Nord Crab Spirits, located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. If you have questions, comments or suggestions asked your future in Black America programs, email us at inblackamerica at kut.org. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. Remember to like us on Facebook and to follow us on Twitter. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station

or of the University of Texas at Austin. You can hear previous programs online at kut.org. Until we have the opportunity again for a productive assistant to Leah Jones and Technico producer David Alvarez, I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. Thank you for joining us today, please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in black America CDs. KUT radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712, that's in black America CDs, KUT radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712. This has been a production of KUT radio.