Skunk Brothers Spirits is run by a family of disabled veterans focused on locally sourced, quality distilled spirits. The Washington-based team is building on their grandfather’s prohibition-era moonshine recipe to bring small batch spirits to their loyal customer base. 

This is the era of the artisan, locally-crafted food and beverage. With craft beer sales taking off, as well as a host of other higher price point food trends like the faux meat craze, it’s clear that consumers in this space are looking for quality goods backed by noble values. 

Despite this, the liquor market remains dominated by the likes of Jack Daniels and Jim Beam — both of which fail to deliver on any of these new tenants of the market in 2019. Even some of the so-called craft spirits brands are just repackaging the same mass-produced liquor.

-https://www.lek.com/insights/ei/top-10-trends-affecting-spirits-industry

From our Moonshine Corn Whiskey to our Apple Pie Brandy, all of our spirits are hand-made right here in Washington. We believe we already have all the best ingredients in our community, so we work with local farmers and suppliers to produce the highest quality spirits from scratch. 

We’re bringing all the elements that consumers have been sorely missing from the spirits industry — transparent sourcing, long-tested recipes and ever-evolving flavors. 

The spirits market has shown excellent growth in recent years, maintaining a decade long streak of expansion. As the overall market grows considerably, the craft spirits niche has been steadily eating away at the gains of their mass-produced competitors. From 2017 to 2018, U.S. craft spirits distilleries grew to 760+ in 2016, from only 60 in 2003, approximately 2,000 permits issued. (source: American Distilling Institute, Market Watch, Jan. 2016)

Craft is 1.7% of total spirits market by case sales, and projected to hit 8% by 2020. (source: BNP Paribas, Market Watch Jan. 2016)

Due to the nature of their upmarket positioning, craft spirits are also out punching its weight in value. The total market share for spirits hit a record 35.4% in 2015 of a $24.1 Billion industry. (source: Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, Feb 2, 2016.)

We are now able to produce 52 gallons per day in our 320 gallon still and 100 gallon finishing still and have recently began expanding from our beloved whiskey to gin, brandy and cordials.

Thanks to our superb location in Columbia River Gorge, a tourist hotspot full of natural beauty tucked away on the border between Washington and Oregon, we’ve built relationships with many of our customers who come back year after year to enjoy a visit to our tasting room.

We take the finest ingredients from all around Columbia River Gorge and distill spirits that make taste-testers swoon. We distill all of our products in-house at our distillery in Washington — never repackaging other manufacturer’s spirits. 

Each season we take the freshest fruit from our community and use them in our seasonal cordials; these liqueurs are a big hit and we struggle to keep up with demand.

Our “sweet” liquors can be sold fresh, at the same time we’ve been steadily producing whiskey to age, stowed away in barrels to naturally enhance the flavor.

We are currently selling almost exclusively from our tasting room, with supplementary revenue coming from online ordering and limited local distribution. With just these three sales channels and no outside marketing, we have more than doubled our sales from the prior year with time to spare in our fiscal year. With the proceeds from this raise, we plan to turn on additional marketing channels of advertising, online marketing, and regional sales personnel we will successfully reach our production and sales goals.

We are one of only two craft distilleries in the region, and have ingrained our company as a staple of the community. Our customers love coming in to our tasting room and sitting down with the family owners and operators of the business.

Our local ingredients assure that our product reflects the seasons and tastes of the northwest. That’s an intangible aspect that mass-produced spirits will never be able to emulate.

In the past five years, we have focused on our community, building relationships with farmers and growers in the area, and cementing our brand as a trustworthy source of superb spirits. Now, we’re ready for the next steps.

That means we want to fund a sales and marketing department to bring our unique flavors to a wider audience.

We’re looking to invest $100,000 in capital to remove bottlenecks in the distilling process and ramp up production to meet our exploding demand.

We want to continue expanding our product line, incorporating age-accelerated whiskey into our repertoire — as well as a bevy of other exciting offerings.

These investments will allow our brand to grow well beyond the Columbia River Gorge market and buck the seasonality of the tourism market.

We’re the Donoho family. We’re a family of veterans — from the Vietnam War to Operation Iraqi Freedom — and we are all ecstatic to be able to give back to the veterans and first responders community through various charity events.  

We grew up hearing stories about Grandpa Donoho, who hustled his way through prohibition and the Great Depression by slinging moonshine to locals to feed his family. 

Today we carry on his tradition and hope to do him proud one bottle of whiskey at a time.

Skunk Brothers Spirits has already proved we can sell our products with the best of ‘em. Without any sophisticated marketing or sales-team we’ve been able to attract fans from all over — simply thanks to our superior liquor.

So far, we have had to play defense, with demand peaking and our facilities unable to catch up.

If we build operations capital, and generate our own sales leads through comprehensive marketing strategy, there’s no telling how fast we can grow.

We’re confident, not just because the numbers are in our favor, but because there’s something magical that happens when someone tastes our craft spirits. So, join us, and help Skunk Brothers Spirits get our craft distilled labor of love out into the world.