Now Drink This

By Sarah Sturmon Dale/Minneapolis

Watch out, Grey Goose. There's a co-op of 900 Minnesota farmers aiming to win drinkers over to their top-shelf vodka. Made in conjunction with the originators of Pete's Wicked Ale, which helped launch the U.S.'s craft-beer phenomenon in the 1990s, Shakers vodka is quickly gaining notice.

"We are trying to create a leadership American vodka brand in Shakers," says Tim Clarke, CEO of Infinite Spirits, who, together with co-founders Mark Bozzini and master distiller Pat Couteaux, spent two years researching and experimenting with ingredients before introducing the $30-a-bottle vodka in 2003. Distilled in a six-column continuous still in the retrofitted Chippewa Valley Ethanol Co. in Benson, Minn.--using wheat and rye grown by nearby farmers--Shakers' four flavors of vodka racked up about $4 million in sales in 17 states in 2004. Now the brand is going national. "It's a real cracker of a spirit," says F. Paul Pacult, editor of the Spirit Journal, a trade newsletter, "one of the hottest brands around." --By Sarah Sturmon Dale/Minneapolis