Five products in, the owners of a Pickaway County distillery are focused like a laser on the measured growth of the business.

Mike Orozco, 50, of Columbus said when friends and family ask how business is, he and M&O Spirits co-founder Doug McLaughlin, 53, of Grove City look at each other and nod in agreement. Things are good.

“It’s where we need to be right now because if everybody knew about this,” he said, holding a bottle of the distillery’s whiskey in his hand, “we would run out and, then, we wouldn’t be able to maintain product, and then we’d lose people. So, where we are right now is good.”

“We definitely would like more sales, but I don’t think we want to be committed to a large restaurant chain, yet,” Orozco continued. “We’ve got a couple of restaurant contacts, and it’s kind of like, let’s just wait.

McLaughlin, M&O’s master distiller, agreed, adding that a smaller, independent restaurant, what he called a “one-off restaurant,” would be a good fit for the company.

“A couple of little, local places where people can find you: Keep it quaint. Keep it small; that’s good,” Orozco chimed in.

For distillers, controlled growth is not just a business plan, it’s generally a matter of necessity.

While vodkas usually are unaged, whiskeys are another story. Almost all types of American whiskey must be stored in oak containers for a certain amount of time, however no minimum length of time is specified. To earn the designation of “straight” whiskey, the liquor must remain barreled for two years.

Four-year-old M&O’s current lineup consists of a vodka and four whiskeys, one of which is a bourbon.

Orozco said he and McLaughlin meticulously monitor the aging of the liquor inside the white oak barrels at the back of the business’ headquarters in Ashville. Like expectant parents, one or the other is always asking about the timing of the blessed event: “Our next barrel comes off when? Our next bottling is when?”

Orozco said satisfaction with the aging process of a given spirit is a major consideration for a distiller because there are no clear-cut timelines for when the whiskeys will be ready to bottle.

“Do we like what it’s doing in the barrel now, and will it be ready,” he posited. “Or, should we let it go for another six months? The longer it sits, usually, the better it gets. The smoother it gets.”

He said the line delineating inventory and quality is super fine. “We don’t want to rush anything.”

“And we don’t want the warehouse to be calling us (to restock), if we don’t have product to give them,” McLaughlin added.

The relatively recent upgrade of a gleaming, stainless steel 200-gallon still has given the distillers the capacity to greatly increase production.

“We’re basically jumping from 20 barrels to 45 barrels a year,” Orozco estimated.

A reconfiguration of the rick room to accommodate that increase already is under way — a bruising task when moving and trolleying the couple dozen or so 550-pound barrels with only a manual chain hoist and the sweat equity of the two men.

“Everything is literally done by hand,” Orozco said, noting that “everything” includes the construction of the handmade wooden ricks.

Within the year, the partners expect their nascent business to outgrow its current space — a compact tile-block building that sits along a railroad siding in the village’s central business district. They have discussed the possibility of adding on to the south end of the structure to accommodate the company’s growth.

“This place was bigger than anything we could’ve ever imagined, but it got small fast, especially with a bigger still and increasing production,” Orozco said.

With products currently sold in 15 state liquor agencies along a mostly north-south corridor from Columbus south, M&O has made modest efforts toward the company’s initial goal of populating Franklin County.

“We’re probably only a quarter of the way there, then COVID hit,” McLaughlin said.

In the short term, the distillery expects to continue toward that end and then move into fleshing out the remaining southern half of the state.

“If we pick up a couple of restaurants, a couple of taverns along the way, that’s ideal — just enough to where people know to ask for us,” McLaughlin continued. “Just kind of let it be a natural growth, not a massive growth, to where we can’t keep up (and) where we’re needing to bottle this before we feel it’s ready. It’s better to let this sit a little bit longer, than to be pulling it too soon.”

Just as whiskey gets better over time, McLaughlin and Orozco voiced hope that their business will do the same.

“If we double what we have here, and if it ends up being something our kids are doing in 20 years, then what a blessing,” Orozco said.

History

The two men have worked together in film and video production the past 21 years. At one point, they worked for the same employer; now, they do gigs together all over the country.

McLaughlin, a “Berkeley-trained musician” as Orozco is quick to point out, does the audio work, while Orozco “does everything else.”

“If somebody has something they can’t figure out, they call Mike,” McLaughlin said.

Orozco said the nature of the work and the travel involved sounds glamorous — “And it really is,” he exclaims — but it keeps both men away from their new endeavor, their families and homes.

“You get to a point in your life where you’re like, you know, we should be looking for what the future’s going to bring,” he said.

The more gig-like structure of the work has allowed McLaughlin to concentrate full time on production. He said he logs between 40 to 60 hours a week at the distillery. His wife Lori often comes in to help with tasks such as loading mash into the still.

“Being in one place is a lot easier than me being all over the United States,” he said.

Both men credit at least a portion of their countless hours on the road with the idea to make their own whiskey.

“That’s kind of where this stemmed from,” McLaughlin said. “We’re in Kansas and after a long day, a 14-hour day, we’re in a restaurant late, sipping on a bourbon, and I swirl it in the glass,” an action he mimicked with an imagined rocks glass in his hand, “and say, ‘Mike, how hard do you think this stuff is to make?’

“So, we devised a plan on the way home … and that started the process.”

That was 2014. By the time they were ready to start operations in 2017, he had read everything about liquor making that he could get his hands on. He then began reading about the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. McLaughlin said he called Orozco “and he’s like, ‘We’re screwed.’”

The duo learned quickly how stringent federal and state regulations are.

The building, including all of the distilling equipment it houses, is bonded by the federal government. As for the liquor the distillery produces, all of it must be sold to Ohio Liquor Control before any of it can be sold to a customer.

“It’s a lot to keep up with,” McLaughlin said.

Distillers who produce less than 100,000 gallons of a 100-proof spirit, pay $2 per gallon in federal excise taxes. For larger producers, the tax is $2 per gallon for the first 100,000 gallons and anything in excess of that volume is taxed $13.50 per gallon.

Then, there are state taxes.

“Whenever we get a finished product and we sell it to the state, the state gives us a wholesale number that we negotiate,” McLaughlin said. “Say for example, Smoke, which is a $39.96 bottle of whiskey, the state takes $16.75.”

He half-joked that these amounts are determined by an equation Liquor Control employs to determine whether a distiller can make money at the end of the process.

“So, we keep about $23 and change and they get $16.75 of it,” he continued. “They’re getting 42 percent of the retail price on the shelf.”

Not to mention, taxes on any profit the company may make once it becomes a profitable enterprise, Orozco added.

“It’s frustrating,” McLaughlin said, but both men realize it’s the price of doing business in Ohio.

Handcrafted Spirits

It was during one of their late-night, marathon road trips that the partners defined their company’s role in the community and in the liquor industry.

On the back of each bottle of spirits produced at M&O is the following statement: “Ashville, Ohio… born on the heels of distilleries in 1812 along the banks of Walnut Creek, creating a junction of trade and commerce 20 miles south of Columbus, Ohio. Long since forgotten, M&O Spirits… born out of love for great whiskey, is bringing distillation back to Ashville.”

The historic distilleries referenced were built in 1812 by William and Richard Staige (Stage) on property that would become Ashville. The Staiges later sold the distillery to Mahlon Ashbrook and according to articles about the city’s founding, the distillery was closed in the late 1850s.

McLaughlin and Orozco have indeed brought distillation back to Ashville.

M&O’s first product Ta-Da!, a whiskey, debuted in July 2019. The two-grain whiskey — made from Marysville-grown red wheat and malted barley — is aged a mere but meaningful three hours in a toasted oak cask.

“And you can see the yellow tinge to it,” Orozco noted. “It’s fantastic.”

“The malted barley is what breaks down the starches to make more sugar out of it,” McLaughlin said of the mash. “You’ve got to have that amylase from the malt to break down the starches into sugar.”

Ta-Da! is distilled four times, making it sweet and smooth.

“By the time that’s done the fourth time, it’s 184 proof,” the master distiller continued. “And then we knock it down to 90, … we stick it into the barrel for three hours (to introduce the profile of the toasted oak) and, then, we immediately pull it out of that barrel, pour it through a filter just to get rid of any carbon or barrel debris that might be in there and we bottle it.”

The way Orozco tells it, his wife Dina, who he affectionately calls a “Grey-Goose girl,” kept asking when the guys were going to make a vodka.

“Technically, (Ta-Da!) could be a vodka because it’s distilled four times,” he said, “but it has a sweetness to it when you taste it, like tequila, and it has the smoothness of a vodka, so that’s where we came up with the name of Ta-Da!”

Ta-Da! was named a John Barleycorn Award gold medalist in 2020.

The goal to provide a vodka to equal the wife’s preferred brand, though, had not yet been met, so the quest continued. M&O won the battle with its newest product, just released in January.

Distilled from potatoes, the sole non-whiskey spirit of the distillery’s lineup also recently was awarded The Fifty Best’s gold medal in a blind taste test of domestic vodkas.

“It’s craft, small batch, and we’re local. We bottle our vodka at 84 proof, so you get a little bit more kick out of it,” McLaughlin said, comparing it to one of the most popular national brands, which is priced similarly.

M&O Spirits Smoke — labeled an American whiskey, but technically a bourbon, according to the master distiller — was released in August 2019, just in time for the Grove City Whiskey Festival that year.

McLaughlin explained the labeling issue.

“People in the federal government had a hard time trying to figure out why it’s called Smoke and what did I do to it to call it Smoke, and they didn’t want to call it a bourbon even though it follows all of the rules of a bourbon,” he said.

The bourbon mash is distilled and it is barreled in a new charred oak barrel, just as bourbon is, but M&O adds 12 smothered oak staves that they char themselves.

“Instead of quenching (the burning staves) with water, we smother it, so that the smoke stays in the char and, then, we add those immediately to the barrel,” McLaughlin explained. “That’s what gives it a slight smokey finish.”

He said he’s still tweaking with production to find the perfect balance.

“I designed Smoke as a big, full-flavored sipping whiskey,” he said. “It’s bottled at 100 proof and it’s distilled two times, so it still retains all of its heaviness.”

McLaughlin said there’s a little viscosity to the mouth-feel of Smoke, “because it’s got so much stuff still in it; it hasn’t been stripped out.”

The pair agreed that an Old Fashioned is the only other way to drink this spirit … if you must go for a mixed drink. Ice alone is their preference.

M&O Spirits Black is the brand’s triple-distilled, double-oaked bourbon.

It is aged in a new charred oak barrel and after a year, the guys add 10 to 12 toasted staves to pull smoke from the char and add another dimension to the resulting bourbon. It is then aged for at least another year.

“What it does is it gives you a whole other level of fresh oak,” McLaughlin said.

He said Orozco cuts the staves and toasts them in the oven at his home. The toasting temperature determines whether the staves develop a vanilla flavor profile or a caramel one.

“Once they’re toasted, Mike goes out and chars them to Level 4, … caramelizing all those sugars,” McLaughlin continued. “It’s quite the process, but what you end up with is a big bold bourbon, bottled at 90 proof.”

Triple distilling produces a much more refined spirit, he added.

“Even though the Smoke and the Black start out as the same mash, they’re just totally different products,” Orozco said. “With the aging process and what we do in the middle of it.”

“And the distilling,” McLaughlin interrupted.

“Twice distilled, compared to three times,” Orozco finished.

“It’s a big deal,” McLaughlin added.

The business secures its oak boards from a friend who works in the tree business and mills the wood down to 8- to 12-foot lengths.

Orozco has mastered the charring technique to come up with what his partner calls the “alligator char” that burns no more than an eighth of an inch into the wood’s surface.

The fourth spirit the duo devised was its Pumpkin Spice Holiday Spirit, an American whiskey intended to commemorate Pickaway County’s largest annual event — the Circleville Pumpkin Show.

“Anytime you say pumpkin spice, people get freaked out and they automatically think ‘Oh, my God, it’s going to be a like a pumpkin spice latte’ — pumpkin over the top,” Orozco said.

“They think it’s going to taste like syrup,” McLaughlin added.

“This truly is an American whiskey with a subtle pumpkin finish,” Orozco said. “Almost like a pecan or a pumpkin pie finish. You get it in the back of your throat, you get it in your gums, you get it the back of your tongue and it’s just fantastic.”

It’s bottled at 90 proof and “it’ll catch up with you fast,” he cautioned.

“People who pick it up and think it’s going to be like a pumpkin spice latte. It’s like, no, no, no. This is whiskey,” Orozco continued.

McLaughlin takes their bourbon mash and adds 26 lbs. to each 50 gallons of mash. After it ferments, it is distilled twice.

“The pumpkin smooths everything out,” McLaughlin said.

Upon barreling, two oversized filters filled with a combination of spices including nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger are doused into the whiskey to age in the barrel.

The nuances of their products have been well received by industry professionals. In addition to the awards previously cited, M&O Spirits has received the following awards:

• MicroLiquor Spirit Award 2020 Gold Medal and 2020 Silver Package Design Black;
• John Barleycorn Awards 2020 Gold Medal Black; and
• John Barleycorn Awards 2020 Gold Medal Smoke.

Heads, hearts and tails

The master distiller offered an in-depth run down of the cutting process, which separates pure ethyl alcohol from the alcohols no distillery wants in their final product. Federal regulations require the master distiller to register how much of each cut he collects from a given distillation.

“When we do our mash run, that’s when we’re stripping all the alcohol out,” McLaughlin began.

The resulting product is called low wines — the weak spirits produced after the first distillation.

“We’ll take our low wines and put it into the finishing still and run them through,” he continued. “This is where we make our cuts — heads, hearts and tails — of the alcohol.

The heads cut comprises the wood alcohols produced during fermentation — methanol, acetone, and the ethenes created by the yeast’s interaction with grain particles, the chaff and the stem, that end up in the mash.

“Now, what’s nice about a still is we have the ability to control temperature, and we know that the heads portion that we don’t want, comes out at a lower temperature” — between 145 and 174 degrees, McLaughlin said. “So, as the temperature rises, we can start pulling those spirits that come off and separating it from the finished product — pure ethyl alcohol flavored by the mash combination we come up with.”

At 175 degrees, there occurs a noticeable hydrometer drop, and he begins collecting the hearts cut.

“That’s all basically pure ethyl alcohol coming through,” he said. “So, we’ll collect hearts at 165 proof down to 80 proof. Out of 26.5 gallons that go in, I’ll get about 16.5 gallons out. So, we’re losing 10 gallons.

“Once we get down to the tails cut, …. there’s still a lot of alcohol left in here, but what starts happening in that lower cut is the fusile oils from the corn and the grain — because all vegetables have oil in them — all of those fusile oils start coming out at that point, and it taints the flavor.”

The tails cut also tends to take on a cloudy appearance from the oils. There remains, however, a lot of alcohol in what’s left: about 7.5 proof gallons.

“So, we collect our tails, save them and run them when we run more mash; we put our tails in with that,” he said.

The intended result is uniformity.

“We’re going for consistency,” McLaughlin said. “We put it all back into that still, recollect it and it becomes this circular motion.”

Circular motion, just as distilling has returned to the land known as Ashville.