A new distillery from Silverton is already winning medals in national competitions

The first liquor Abiqua Spirit Distillery produced commercially won a gold medal. 

Silverton Vodka, a tall bottle with an understated, cream-colored label that features a  1890 photo of downtown Silverton, won gold in the American Distilling Institute's annual competition. The largest of its kind in the U.S. focused on craft distillers, ADI only awarded 2019 gold medal scores to three non-flavored vodkas. 

"That's a pretty big step after only having been in business for four months," said  founder Adam Messick. 

In the works since 2014, Abiqua officially began selling their first product in October 2018. 

In late March, after the ADI win, Silverton Vodka won again, and it wasn't alone. Judges at the San Francisco International Spirit Competition awarded all three of Abiqua's liquors – Silverton Vodka, Gallon House Gin, and Üla Orange Liqueur – silver medal scores. 

These wins affirmed Abiqua's quest to make the best-possible small batch spirits. Now, the six-person family business is working to introduce Oregon to these homegrown award winners, find a home for a tasting room, and decide what their next batch will be. 

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Potato inspiration 

The idea for Abiqua Spirit Distillery first germinated in 2014 along with a bumper crop of potatoes.

Messick, who grew up in Hillsboro, doesn't have a professional background in the spirits industry. He spent 14 years living in Europe. He completed two deployments to Iraq while serving in the Air Force  based at Aviano Air Base, and then worked in Germany as an IT contractor with General Dynamics. 

He and his wife, Youlia Messick, expecting their first child, eventually moved home to Oregon.

Messick's parents, Michael and Richard Messick, who now live just outside of Silverton, had planted a large garden plot of potatoes that summer. When Youlia proposed the idea of using some of them to make vodka, Adam bought an 8-gallon test still. Ten pounds of spuds at a time, they started experimenting with distilling. 

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"We just kind of got excited about it," Adam said. "We read books and talked to people and hired a lawyer," who helped them secure approval from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau to form a distillery.

In 2015 they attended an ADI conference where they met Rusty Figgins, distiller at XO Alambic in Walla Walla, Washington, who helped sculpt the vision for the business.

The group wants to distinguish Abiqua, Adam said, by "only producing high quality beverages...we really don't want to just shove something out and see how it works."

They apply the same ethos to the equipment as much as the finished product. Instead of ordering a still from an established company, Richard Messick, an engineer, designed one. They had it built at Holland Custom Fabricator in Donald.

Abiqua Spirit Distillery was officially founded by three fathers and three sons: Adam and Richard Messick; Adam's uncle Don and cousin Taylor Messick; and close family friends Dennis StJohn and his son Cody StJohn. 

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Throughout 2016 and into 2017, the group converted an outbuilding that had previously housed Richard's woodworking shop and recording studio into a production distillery, moving from hobby to entrepreneurial enterprise. They installed the custom still and fermenters, and Dennis and Cody StJohn drove to Reno to pick up a 1958 Cherry-Burrell mash tun. 

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Though it was vodka that first spurred the idea of making a distilled spirit, the early batches they made were a less refined, unaged Irish whiskey called poitín. 

"It retains the essence of the grain," Adam said, and while he liked that one could taste that essence in the finished product, he ultimately decided that poitín, largely unheard of in North America, would be a tough sell as a first commercial release. 

Their key questions became, he said, "what can we produce? And can we produce it at high enough quality that it's special?"

Fantastic spirits and where to find them

Ultimately, Adam hopes to make barrel-aged whiskeys from locally-grown barley in accordance with the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897. This is to say, whiskeys that reflect the flavor of a single season's grain, distilled by one distillery and aged in a federally bonded warehouse for a minimum of four years.

"The number one selling whiskey on the market is Jameson," Adam said. He's confident there would be a market for a locally made product with a flavor profile similar to that of the Irish tiger. Unfortunately, making bottled-in-bond whiskeys takes a substantial time investment. 

Instead, Abiqua is starting with clear spirits. Silverton Vodka is distilled from potatoes and filtered 160 times. Though sold at 80 proof, it's incredibly smooth. "So smooth," Adam said, "that when we get done filtering it we take a quarter out and re-distill that just to add a little bit of bite."   

Abiqua's second release also has a local connection. It's named Gallon House Gin in homage to a 1916 covered bridge that spans Abiqua Creek. Juniper-forward and dry with a refreshing balance of floral, citrus, and spice aromatics, it is doubtlessly a league beyond the hooch that bootleggers and moonshiners allegedly dispensed on the bridge during Prohibition, using the toll box to exchange payment. 

Both spirits are soft in the mouth; precise, balanced and not overwhelmingly "hot."

"We've got the filtration down," Adam said. "These can be drank neat, they can be put into a martini... I will never produce a liquor that can't be enjoyed neat."

While vodka and gin are popular base spirits, Abiqua's third release is the one that is helping them to introduce themselves to area bars and restaurants who might hesitate to stock another of the basics. 

Üla (pronounced "oo-luh") is an orange liqueur made using California oranges and sweetened with beet sugar.

"I started making this stuff because my wife likes cosmos," Adam said. Comparable to Grand Marnier, Combier or Cointreau, it's a locally-made swap for a spirit that lends citrus softness to plenty of classic cocktails. The name? A tribute to Youlia.

As Abiqua finds its way onto restaurant menus and liquor store shelves across Oregon, more and more people are interested in visiting the distillery. But because it's located in a neighborhood, literally behind Michael and Richard's house, the Abiqua production facility can't open an on-site tasting room or host tours due to zoning and public access road requirements.

'My heart was in this'

The best place to find bottles of Abiqua Spirits are OLCC liquor stores. Every weekend four of the founders set up tables at stores around the state and offer tastes of the products. According to Adam, about 80 stores stock Silverton Vodka, and only slightly fewer carry Gallon House Gin. Üla, the most recent release, is available in about 35 stores thus far. They've also begun bottling Silverton Vodka in half-gallon bottles, just in time for summer. 

Next up, Adam said, is likely a coffee liqueur in time for fall, and potentially a rum or perhaps an infused agave spirit similar to tequila. Test batches of whiskey are ageing in tiny barrels in a distillery cabinet.

"Eventually I'd like to start another location in downtown Silverton," he says. His dream would be to use Abiqua's existing facility to produce and barrel-aged whiskeys, and to move production of vodka, gin, and other un-aged spirits to a downtown Silverton setting where they could offer guided tastings and sell their products.

Regardless of how long that takes, Adam is all in. 

After he returned from accepting the gold ADI medal for Silverton Vodka, he said, "I started to do a couple of projects for the company I was working for...[but] my heart wasn't in it anymore, my heart was in this."

Taste Abiqua Spirit Distillery's products in downtown Silverton at Silverton First Friday on Friday, June 7th Friday 6 to 8 p.m., and follow them on Facebook @AbiquaSpiritDistillery to learn of more events. 

Emily Teel is the Food & Drink Editor at the Statesman Journal. Contact her at eteel@statesmanjournal.com, or via Facebook or Twitter. See what she's cooking and where she's eating this week on Instagram: @emily_teel