Few Spirits

Art and whiskey have a lot in common. Both are creative expressions of the maker, and for each their value is subjective. Some may be awe struck by a painting or musical piece while others are not. Some may sip a whiskey and proclaim it to be the best thing they’ve ever tasted while others struggle to choke it down. Regardless of one’s personal connection to a work of art or a dram of whiskey, at the heart of both is creation. Creation is the act of making something that did not previously exist, for if you made something that already existed then you are simply imitating, replicating, or in some cases, deceiving. Creativity requires boldness. To be bold is to take risks. To be bold is to have courage and confidence in the face of uncertainty. To be bold is to innovate and push the boundaries of what is expected. It is a quality that few possess, and that FEW Spirits, in Evanston, Illinois has harnessed to fuel their success. 

Paul Hletko grew up in a town called Richland outside Kalamazoo, Michigan before attending University of Michigan to study engineering. Admittedly, Paul didn’t care much for engineering and barely knew what it was when he applied in high school. He was good at math and science and that was what he was told he should do. Paul would tell you that he is blessed with a raging case of attention deficit disorder, so he struggles to focus. The only times he can focus is when he is making something. At his core, Paul is an artist, and aside from “drinking enough coffee to kill a horse,” creativity is what gets him going. He is a lover of rock and roll and has played guitar in a couple of bands, including a Grateful Dead cover band. But despite his deep passion for music, he recognized that he wasn’t going to be the greatest guitarist in the world. He remembered enjoying an engineering in law class while at the University of Michigan, so he enrolled in law school at Loyola University in Chicago. Paul was a decent attorney, but the rigid structure and monotonous paper pushing and box ticking of working at a law firm clashed with his creative drive. 

“Every day I would get up angry about having to go to work. I’d spend all day getting angrier. By the time I got home at night, I had a full head of anger going on. I’m pissed off at everybody… I’m like, what the hell kind of life is this? Why am I trading a good life for little pieces of green paper when I could create and make something new and different and maybe do something.” - Paul Hletko, Co-Founder/ Master Distiller FEW Spirits

Growing up, Paul didn’t have a very close relationship with his grandfather, Alfred Dube. Alfred grew up in what is now the Czech Republic and was the lone survivor of his family following the invasion of the Nazis during World War II. Some time after moving to America, Alfred and his wife divorced, causing a rift in the family that kept Paul at a distance as a boy. It wasn’t until Paul was in his early twenties that he and his grandfather started to slowly build up a relationship. Every time they spoke, Alfred would mention a brewery that the family used to own in the former Czechoslovakia. The brewery had been seized during the Nazi invasion and it was Alfred’s life goal to try and get it back for the family. Alfred passed away in 2008, never succeeding in that goal. Rather than wallowing in sadness and outrage, Paul wanted to try to do something positive. They were not going to get the old brewery back but maybe they could create something new. Paul had been brewing beer at home since the 90’s and had learned a lot about the process over a couple of decades, but the craft beer movement was well underway at that point with somewhere around 1,500 craft breweries in the United States. Paul had never distilled before but, with the drive to honor his family’s legacy of producing alcohol and the desire to do something different, he set his sights on the spirits industry. 

Unlike brewing, it is illegal to distill without a license. As a decent attorney, Paul did not want to break the law so, in order to learn how to distill, he needed to get a license. The first step after deciding to open a distillery is to choose where to put it. Paul drew a circle with a 6 hour driving radius around his house, which opened up a lot of possibilities from St. Louis, Missouri to Madison, Wisconsin, but none of those places felt authentic to him. He decided to set up shop where he was living in Evanston, Illinois. Opening a distillery in Evanston wasn’t going to be easy. Evanston is considered by many to be the birthplace of prohibition and remains the headquarters for Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WTCU). Evanston was a dry town from the day it was founded until 1972, and a drop of liquor had never been produced there until Paul managed to get the laws changed to allow him to build FEW Spirits. 

“I had to go to the city and say, ‘Hey, do me a favor ... Here’s what I want to do. I need you to tell me no, I can’t do it, so I can go somewhere else.’ They were like, ‘What do you mean? Everybody wants us to say yes.’ I’m like, ‘No, no. I want you to tell me no, so I can go somewhere else. Because if you say yes, and then it ends up being no then I’m going to be very very angry. But if you say no right now, then I’ll just say cool, shake your hands and walk away.’ They were like, ‘No, no, we can do that!’ “

Aside from changing the laws in Evanston, there are a variety of other hurdles to overcome in setting up a distillery. They require a massive amount of capital up front, you have to secure a commercial lease, you have to order the right kind of equipment and then figure out how to put it all together. Paul raised a fair amount of money from family and friends and took out loans that shackled him to substantial debt, all without knowing if he would be successful in trying something he had never done before.

“It’s scary. It’s hard. You have to have this real faith in yourself that you’re going to be able to figure it out. I still have that faith. I still think I’m going to figure it out one day. I haven’t figured it out yet, but someday I’ll figure it out. It’s just working through it, solving problems. Every day trying to solve a few more problems … You’re going out there and everyone in the world is telling you that you can’t do it, and you’re stupid, and oh my god you’ve got a wife and you’ve got kids and you’re going to fail. And you’re like, maybe I will fail... I’ve failed an awful lot in life, but I’m not afraid of failure. You only really fail if you don’t get up.”

Paul adds that you have to be “effectively psychotic” so you don’t give up when it’s hard. His connection to his family and his enduring need to create is what helped him push through in those moments, because if it was only about making money then he would have quit. When it finally came time to fire up the stills and start making whiskey, he leaned on his connection to brewing to guide his process. 

In Paul’s mind, fermentation is key. You can make a bad whiskey from a good ferment, but you can’t make a good whiskey from a bad ferment. FEW takes a brewers approach to fermentation which Paul calls “fiscally irresponsible but artistically desirable.” They ferment on the grain, which decreases their yield but maintains more grain flavor. They agitate their ferments to make sure gravity doesn’t pull all the solids to the bottom of the tank and to avoid inconsistent temperatures which can lead to off flavors. Almost no one agitates their ferments out of fear that it will introduce oxygen which would destroy the whole process. They use different strains of yeast depending on what they are making. Traditional Kentucky bourbon is sweet, so Paul wanted their bourbon to have spicier notes. In addition to having a high rye mashbill (70% corn, 20% rye, 10% malted barley) they use a Belgian Saison Ale yeast to lend notes of cinnamon, coriander and pepper. Traditional rye whiskey is spicy, so they use a wine yeast from France’s Loire Valley to bring out some stone fruit sweetness to balance out the spice. They temperature control their fermentation to draw out more of those flavors even though it makes the process take longer. FEW Spirits could double their production overnight by changing their yeast or altering their process, but they won’t do it because what matters most is what’s in the glass. 

FEW uses a combination of three stills to create their unique spirits. The wash still is a stainless steel column still built by Vendome Copper and Brass Works in Louisville, Kentucky. The whiskey is then finished in a 1500 liter Kothe copper pot still and the gin is finished in a 150 liter Kothe copper pot still. FEW Spirits started off with pot stills, quickly sizing up with the Kothe stills to meet increased demand. As demand continued to skyrocket they brought in the Vendome still to help them move through the wash more quickly and efficiently, as columns are built to do. That said, their column is constructed and operated specifically to generate low proof low wines to maintain many of the esters created during fermentation. They finish in the Kothe stills because they don’t want to lose the texture and flavor that comes from copper pot stills. 

FEW is currently focused on filling 53 gallon barrels, but they have historically used a variety of 5, 15, 30, and 53 gallon barrels from the Barrel Mill in Avon, Minnesota to create their flagship products. For each size barrel, they focus on different flavor characteristics. 

“Small barrels are exceptionally good for high extractives, but they aren’t so good with other aspects of maturation. By using different sized barrels you can tailor and marry different flavors to get to our whiskey. In the whiskey world a lot of people are against small barrels. People say you can’t make good whiskey in small barrels. That’s actually just flat out false. I believe that I’ve proven that you can make a great whiskey in small barrels, but I also simultaneously believe that I've proven that you can’t make money making great whiskey in small barrels. If you’re running a distillery you have to make money or you’re going to run out of it. Once you run out of it you can’t make any more whiskey. If you can’t make whiskey then you can’t create.”

All of these small production decisions differentiate FEW Spirits from their competition, but they choose not to focus on them when it comes to branding and marketing. That isn’t to say that the way they choose to make their whiskey isn’t crucial to who they are, but they understand that most people don’t care to know all the minute details because again, what is in the glass is more important. Branding is all about storytelling. FEW is the story of Paul’s family and a distillery built in the birthplace of the temperance movement, but something that is just as important as story is integrity. Consumers these days want to feel a connection with the things they buy. They want to feel like they are a part of an experience. In 1871 a great fire devastated the city of Chicago leaving the once great city in ruins. Years later, in 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Fair which served as a symbol that the city was a phoenix rising from the ashes to reclaim their stature as a major metropolitan player. FEW uses the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair as a sigil on their labels, a symbol of a moment in Chicago’s history when they painted a vision of a world that was yet to be created. These iconic images act as a mirror reflecting FEW’s place in the rebirth of craft whiskey and the reconnection with the art and science of distillation that had been overwhelmed by major manufacturers consolidating the industry in the aftermath of prohibition. 

The Statue of the Republic, 1893 Chicago World’s Fair

In trying to name the distillery, Paul was searching for a word that implied that what they were making was rare, exclusive and high end without specifically using any of those words. 

“Of course if you say something is rare … it’s not rare. If you say something is high end … it’s low end. If you say these words it actually means the opposite.”

Paul liked the word “few” and while he was kicking it around in his head, he happened to read an article about Francis Elizabeth Willard. She was an incredibly influential woman. She became the second and most famous President of the Women’s Temperance Movement and lived right there in Evanston. It is a mere coincidence, or perhaps fate that her initials were the same three letters flying around Paul’s mind, but the stars had aligned and the distillery had its name. 

FEW is sold in all 50 states and in 35 countries. Wide distribution wasn’t necessarily the plan from the start, but they hit their five year sales goal in their second year and they hit their ten year sales goal in their fifth year. In 2013, Whiskey Advocate named FEW’s Rye Whiskey the best craft whiskey of the year and put Paul on the cover of the magazine. Over the years their spirits have won countless awards and accolades. Distributors started calling every day to try and buy the whiskey. It got to the point that FEW instituted a system where they would say no to a distributor three times before they would consider saying yes. After the first call, they would say no and ask the distributor to call back in six months. After the second call it would be the same response, and then again after the third call. Paul wanted to make sure they really wanted their product and weren’t just another distributor collecting brands for their portfolio. One enterprising distributor from the United Kingdom refused to be told no after he waited the initial 6 months and hopped on a plane to meet Paul. Impressed by the dedication, Paul agreed to work with him and the two remain close friends to this day.

In 2016, FEW partnered with a sales and marketing firm called Samson & Surrey, which was a game changer for the company. Selling a large stake in a distillery can be a slippery slope in the spirits industry, especially when art and philosophy don’t align with a new partner’s bottom line, but the philosophy at FEW has not changed. They make the whiskey and their partners market and sell it. 

“We’re able to grow, and now I get to spend more time with my family, because instead of being on the road for nine out of ten weeks, I’m on the road five out of ten weeks. That’s a big difference. I get to see my kids. Instead of having me being the only salesperson for the world, I think we’ve got 42 sales people now. Instead of me being the entire marketing department, we’ve got guys who actually are marketers. Instead of me being the manager of the entire company, I’ve got partners with a combined [one] hundred and twenty years of combined spirits business experience … No matter who you are, there’s things you’re good at and things you’re not good at. When you’re an entrepreneur you have to be good enough at everything, but there is always going to be someone better than you at all of your jobs. I’ve always seen my primary job as to fire myself from every job that I have. As an entrepreneur, my job is to fire myself. At this point, I’ve fired myself from almost everything, which is good.”

As is the case with most craft distilleries, FEW focuses a lot of time and energy on innovation. It is at the heart of everything that they do since creativity is key to who they are. If they just made the same thing day in and day out then they might as well be pushing paper from one side of the desk to the other. Their ideas come from all over the place, and Paul encourages his whole team to speak up when inspiration strikes. Unique spirits have been born from Facebook, or jokes around the distillery. They have partnered with rock and roll bands like The Flaming Lips and Alice in Chains. One concept was born out of Paul’s coffee addiction and is called Cold Cut Bourbon. It is a cask strength bourbon that is proofed down to bottling strength with cold cut coffee instead of water, and was just awarded the World’s Best Flavored Whiskey at the 2020 World Whiskies Awards. 

FEW makes an American Whiskey which is a blend of their bourbon, rye and a cherrywood smoked malt whiskey. The term American Whiskey has long been seen as a pejorative term. A catch all for an American spirit that is not bourbon or rye, often considered to be of low quality and value. However, since the dawn of the American Craft Movement, American Whiskey is in a renaissance as craft producers embrace the freedom that lies outside the regulatory bounds of bourbon and rye to evolve the concept of American Whiskey into something that can, should and does signify quality, creativity and value. 

FEW has achieved a lot in the craft whiskey world, so one might wonder what lies ahead of them in the future.

“I don’t really have aspirations. I want to make whiskey. That’s what I aspire to. Our goal is to make the world’s best whiskey. I think we make some of the world’s best whiskey, but I want to make the world's best. I’ll let you in on a little secret, I’m never going to make the world’s best whiskey because that doesn’t actually exist … There is no such thing as the world’s best whiskey. Never will be … But that’s our goal.”

FEW’s tagline is “Fortune fancies the bold.” It was certainly bold of Paul Hletko to quit working as an attorney to enter into the expensive and risky world of the spirits industry. It is bold to make whiskey differently than how other people are making it, even when those choices hurt him at the bank. It is bold to make bourbon and rye outside of Kentucky and bolder still to do so in the birthplace of prohibition. It is bold to turn away distributors who want to sell his whiskey, time and time again to make sure they want his whiskey for the right reasons. It is bold to continue to push the boundaries of what American whiskey can or should be and to aspire for the unachievable goal of making the best whiskey in the world. FEW Spirits could easily be the definition of the word bold, but it’s not all about them. They’re asking their customers to be bold in choosing their whiskey over something more affordable or more familiar. They are asking distributors to be bold and not to give up. They are asking us all to be a little bit more bold.  FEW Spirits is one of the most successful craft whiskey distilleries, not just in America, but the world. How they rose to that level of success can be difficult to define. Perhaps it was a little bit of luck, mixed with a lot of hard work, and both of those are certainly true. But the real story they are telling us is that it’s impossible to succeed if you are afraid to fail.

TASTING NOTES:

Straight Bourbon Whiskey (46.5% ABV)

Nose: Candy Cherries, Salt Water Taffy, Wet Wood, Tobacco, Leather

Palate: The mouthfeel is soft and thin. The front is sweet with sharp sugar notes and orange citrus. Spice creeps in subtly on the mid palate, blending with vanilla, leading to a more peppery but short finish with woody and savory flavors of smoked brisket.

This bourbon succeeds in being different from a typical bourbon. It retains the sweetness that you expect from the spirit and is nicely balanced with spicy and savory flavors. It has a lot of presence for something that feels so soft on the palate.  

Straight Rye Whiskey (46.5% ABV)

Nose: Peaches, Nectarines, Rye Toast, Vanilla Pound Cake, Leather

Palate: The mouthfeel is light and slightly oily with some spice. The palate has a similar sharp sugar sweetness up front as the bourbon, but it is quickly taken over by fruity notes of dark plums and grapes. Black pepper spice surges in the mid palate and through a medium finish with hints of licorice and vanilla to round it out. 

This is a fantastic rye with a soft but velvety mouthfeel that allows you to thoroughly enjoy the give and take between sweetness and spice. A dangerously easy sipper.