Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1399
july 2009 / the tasting panel / 79 july 2009 / the tasting panel / 79 D ean Phillips, the fi fth-generation President and CEO of family-owned Phillips Distilling, is a fi rm believer in the adage that everything old is new again. "The best way to look forward is to look back," says Phillips as he shows me around the company head- quarters, located in a historic stone building just across the Mississippi River from downtown Minneapolis. As an example, he points out a bottle of emerald-green Phillips Mint Vodka from the 1950s standing on a shelf. "That was the impetus for UV," he says, referring to the company's line of colored and fl avored vodkas that have grown in sales volume from 7,000 cases in 2001 to nearly 900,000 cases this year. Prairie Organic Vodka, a more upscale product introduced by Phillips last year, likewise builds on the company's pioneering role in the luxury vodka cat- egory. Fifteen years ago, Dean's father Edward created the Millenium Import subsidiary to introduce Chopin and Belvedere vodkas from Poland. (The company was subsequently spun off and a controlling interest sold to luxury goods giant LVMH.) Phillips got the idea for making an authentically Minnesota vodka on a trip to Santiago, Chile, his wife's original home. "I saw a display of corn in a grocery store that said 'Minnesota corn,' which there represents the fi nest. It got me thinking, since domestic vodkas are al- most all made from corn grown in or around Minnesota, why not do it here?" Prairie is made from organic corn grown by three family farms in the southwestern Min- nesota town of Benson, just a bottle's toss away from the cooperatively-owned distillery where the corn is turned into vodka. Whatever it is that inspires him, Phillips is clearly do- ing something right. Prairie's hints of melon and pear riding on a creamy texture earned it a Double Gold medal at this year's San Francisco World Spirits Compe- tition—an honor also garnered by the clear, unfl avored version of UV. "In a multi-generation business, you never want to be the one to mess it up," says Phillips, who has been at the company's helm since 2001. "There's a dynamic tension between that feeling and the personal need to change it in a direction that you fi nd compelling." Having only recently turned 40 himself, Phillips says that his company's youthfulness and small size allow it to be more innovative than its more massive competi- tors. "Considering that about 95 percent of our income now is generated by brands that didn't exist in 2000, we've done a pretty admirable job of pushing, sweating and sometimes bleeding to create brands that people maybe didn't give a lot of credit to at fi rst but that have proven to have potential." Prairie vodka's hints of melon and pear riding on a creamy texture earned it a Double Gold medal at this year's San Francisco World Spirits Competition—an honor also garnered by the clear, unfl avored version of UV. by David Mahoney / photos by Lisa Poseley to the Future Future Back A new organic vodka is the latest example of how Dean Phillips fi nds inspiration in his predecessors' innovations