Today we’d like to introduce you to Rick Schneider.
Hi Rick, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am an art professor and teach glassblowing. I was teaching in a number of places, the University of Wisconsin Madison, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Salisbury University, and then I ended up in Mobile Alabama at the University of South Alabama teaching. My wife Nikki Teaches printmaking and we were both able to get jobs there. It didn’t take too long to realize two midwesterners didn’t belong in Alabama. We never felt like we fit in and the weather was not suitable for what we wanted.
After a few years, we started talking about what we would need to do to leave Alabama. Glass Professor jobs are few and far between and I was ready for a change if needed to get my young family somewhere we wanted to be. I started looking for other things to do, and one night while sipping on a glass of Marker’s Mark Bourbon, I punched how to make whiskey into google and found the beginnings of the Craft Distilling movement.
There were only about 150 of them in 2010 when I started researching and getting involved in the industry. I was looking for something new and exciting and I found it. I researched it for about two months and one night asked my wife Nikki what she thought of me leaving teaching and opening a whiskey distillery. She thought the idea sound cool and we started working in earnest toward that goal in 2011. We did about a year’s worth of research and started looking at where to learn what we needed to be successful.
I found Dry Fly distilling in Spokane WA and booked a class with them for the spring of 2012. As I was preparing to head out for the class, I saw a job posting at the Anoka Ramsey Community College glass program in Coon Rapids MN on the north side of Minneapolis. I applied for the job and interviewed in March of 2012, and right after I took my class with Dry Fly.
When I arrived home after the class I got a call the next day and got hired for the job back in my home state of Minnesota. We jumped at it. Nikki is from Seward Nebraska, but relatives have cabins on Pelican Lake in the Brainerd Nisswa area and she spends a lot of summers there. She was more than happy to move us all here for the promise of a job and the opportunity to open the distillery somewhere we wanted to live.
We moved up in July of 2012 and began looking for a place to build our distillery. We didn’t want to end up in the cities with how many of them we knew were coming. Plus at the beginning I only wanted to make whiskey and to survive in the Twin Cities we would have to run a cocktail room. We decided to head out to the country and build something different. We searched for months looking for the place with the right feel, the right buildings to get started, and a county willing to let us build it on a hobby farm.
Isanti was one of the only counties interested in helping us do that. Which is a real trip considering the county was the last dry county in Minnesota. It was dry all the way until 1968. But they wanted us here and helped to make it happen. We bought the property and founded the company in 2013. We started distilling on the property in 2014 after building out the distillery and had our first products in stores in 2015.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It’s never been a smooth road. The state of Minnesota has some of the worst laws in the country for this industry. For one, you can go to a distillery in Wisconsin and buy as much as you like. We are limited to one 750ml bottle. Why our state favors out-of-state businesses over our local ones is a mystery. Sadly the people don’t seem interested in our issues enough to make them a priority.
We’ve already seen a number of Distilleries move to Wisconsin to achieve success. Couple it with huge distilleries now making as many flavored whiskies as they can, not in my opinion to serve a need, but to control shelf space. It is also tough to get noticed now with 50 distilleries in the state and 25 more coming this year.
There are so many forces working against a small family producer it’s daunting to stay relevant and sell enough to keep the bills paid. We are now facing huge price increases in everything from barrels and bottles almost doubling since the pandemic wreaked havoc. on the world and our economies.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My background is in Music and Art. I started my career journey as a punk drummer in the 1980s. I was in a band that played the 7th street entry at First Ave when we were 17 doing all the original material. We were starting to get noticed when the lead singer and guitar players decided to go to College instead of hitting the road and making it.
When the band fell apart I start college at the Berklee College of Music in Boston MA. I was planning to be a studio engineer. I was there a year and a half and really didn’t enjoy the east coast as an 18-year-old. It was a big change. I headed back to the midwest and the University of Wisconsin Madison to study history and either be a teacher or a lawyer.
As I was reaching the end of my undergrad years, I took a glassblowing class and loved it. I graduated and stayed on taking classes for about two years. I then decided I would pursue a graduate degree and thought about being an art professor. I worked towards that from 1996-1998. I met my wife Nikki during this time. We both pursued art professor careers until Alabama. I still play and make art all the time.
I started a music series called Shut Up and Listen. 2023 will be the 5th season. We’ve had Charlie Parr, Erik Koskinen, Sarah Morris, Molly Maher, Mike Munson, and many more. I play a few songs at the beginning of every show. We also built a glassblowing studio in our cocktail room and do demonstrations every other Saturday during the fall and winter for entertainment. I approach everything I do at Isanti Spirits from an artist’s perspective.
I wanted to make unique spirits, not ones that taste like things I’ve already tried. What I am most known for is Isanti Rye Whiskey. I believe it is the oldest rye whiskey in the state at 7 years old. It’s the whiskey I got into this industry to make and I’m very proud of it. We also make a 6.5-year-old bourbon called Sunken Bobber Bourbon, and Tilted Cedars Gin. We make the Gin from Red Cedar Juniper an indigenous Juniper to the United States.
I believe we are the only ones doing this even 7 years later. We harvest the berries for the gin right in our front yard. I also produce a line of spirits under the Dirty Rotten Biker brand. These were done with a motorcycle riding club for an outdoor biker rally the Dirty Rotten Bikers host every year. About 6000 bikers come and the event and spirits raise money for Veterans, kids’ cancer causes, and people in need. It’s a lot of fun to work with the DRB crew.
What are your plans for the future?
I plan to keep going and making great whiskies I am proud of. As one of the smallest, if not the smallest distillery in Minnesota it is hard to manage 6 spirits much less. We added a cocktail room in 2020 and are now in our 3rd year of operation. With the music series, the glassblowing events, and the cocktail room we have a lot going and are trying to get the word out to try growing.
Pricing:
- Isanti Rye Whiskey $45 750ml
- Sunken Bobber Bourbon $45 750ml
- Tilted Cedars Gin $27.50 750ml
- DRB Spirits $25 750ml
Contact Info:
- Website: www.isantispirits.com
- Instagram: @isanti_spirits
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/IsantiSpiritsLlc
Image Credits
Joseph Cunningham and Nikki Schneider
