Ilana Natasha
Kirsty Black, head distiller at Scotland’s Arbikie Distillery, collaborated with Mleziva on a Scotch whisky that’s resulted in cross-oceanic joy.
John Mleziva has labelled all but a few hundred of the bottles of spirits that his company, State Line Distillery, has shipped out since opening in September 2017. From the beginning, he’s recognized that a personal touch would further his goal of establishing State Line as a household name in Madison.
“I quickly learned that my story is an important part of our brand and who we are,” he says.
In a low-traffic site off Dickinson Street, where the near east side is urban-industrial, the small-batch distillery and cocktail lounge is a true “grain-to-glass” operation. All of its grain is sourced from farms in the Midwest through Briess Malt & Ingredients Company, and soon Mleziva hopes to transition to grain exclusively from Wisconsin. In the same spirit, State Line’s products are sold only within state boundaries; he pictures possibly expanding to Minnesota and Illinois, but doesn’t intend to become a national brand.
“I want to keep the company at a size that is profitable and allows us to do really interesting things,” he says. “I don’t want the decision to go into a market to be based on the need to expand. Even with Minnesota, it would be a very focused, deep dive into the Minneapolis area, partnering with some strong restaurants and distributors. I’d like to see the company continue to grow organically.”
The distillery’s core line of spirits includes vodka, gin, barreled gin, coffee liqueur (using locally roasted Kin-Kin coffee), aquavit and aperitivo, and it rolled out a rum during its two-year anniversary weekend in mid-September. Big batches of apple brandy and single-malt whiskey are aging in barrels at State Line’s facility, and probably won’t be released for another couple of years.
In the future, State Line might experiment with bourbon, rye and light whiskeys that would age on an accelerated timeline, Mleziva says. “But, you know, after studying in Scotland, I feel like my professors would come scold me if I didn’t do true aging techniques in terms of making sure the whiskey is robust and ready.”
Homebrewing with his grandfather was Mleziva’s entry to the science of alcoholic fermentation. But he held jobs as an EMT in Minneapolis, a king salmon fishing guide in Alaska, and an administrator at Edgewood College in Madison, before he pursued it seriously.
Brewing was always in the back of his mind, though. During his stint at Edgewood he spent much of his free time volunteering at local breweries, “shoveling grains and doing anything I could to be a part of it,” he says. In 2012, he stumbled upon a brewing and distilling science program in Scotland, a country he’d fallen in love with during a study abroad program. (He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology from UW-Eau Claire in 2003.)
“I found myself thinking only of the program,” he says. “I was really excited. I’d been at Edgewood for four years, but it’s a smaller institution and I was already thinking about what my next career move would be. When I found the program, I knew I had to do it. I wasn’t married and I didn’t have kids or a house, so I decided to follow this crazy dream and moved to Scotland.”
The master’s program in brewing and distilling at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh is condensed into one year, despite the double focus. With a cohort of 50 brewers and distillers from around the world, Mleziva immersed himself in the rigorous, heavily science-based curricula, working on a thesis on the fermentation profiles of bourbon using different strains of yeast.
“Some of the best aspects of my schooling there, beyond the knowledge I took away, were the networking opportunities,” he says. “One of my best friends is the head distiller at Arbikie [Highland Estate] in Scotland, and now we’re doing cross-ocean collaborations on spirits. It’s a tight-knit community we’ve created. We’ve stood up at each other’s weddings. These are lifelong friendships forged through a lot of hard work.”
About halfway through the program, Mleziva’s focus shifted from brewing to distilling. Once he was exposed to the world of crafting spirits, he was hooked by the extra level of expression and creativity that comes with barrel-aging. In most cases brewers want the fermentation process to stop as soon as the beer is ready to be bottled. “Oxygen is the enemy,” Mleziva says. Distillers welcome the spirit’s long-term exposure to oxygen via the oak barrel.
“In many ways, we’re chemists thinking about what we want the spirit to be in four, five, six or seven years, and it’s going to be very different from what goes into the barrel in the beginning,” he says. “But you have to set that up with the grain, the yeast, the fermentation profile. I find that really interesting. It’s a unique challenge.”
After earning the title of master distiller, Mleziva returned to Madison with his eyes set on opening his own business. He worked at another local distillery for about a year while he put together a business plan, attracted investments from friends, family and banks, and acquired specialized distillery equipment. The most anxiety-inducing commitment was ordering a still from Germany a year before he found the building.
“It was toes up to the edge of the cliff, no going back, when I sent the check off,” he says. “I was all-in. Honestly, I hadn’t raised all the money I needed for the project at that point, but there’s nothing like a little motivation.”
In terms of the location, he’d always wanted to be on Madison’s isthmus. He wanted people to walk up to the distillery and see the operation for themselves. He needed a central location suitable for manufacturing, and the near east side was a natural fit.
“I love the location,” he says. “It’s tucked away in one of the last real industrial parts of Madison, though there’s explosive growth all around us. It’s going to be interesting to watch what happens here over the next decade or so.”
Like most new businesses owners, Mleziva has found the first couple of years extremely challenging, but also gratifying beyond his imagination. (His daughter, Chloe, was about six months old when they started breaking ground on the project, so doubly so on both counts.) He’s found affirmation in the sales data that started rolling in after the first year, providing a sense of how State Line is being received.
He still considers State Line to be in the early stages of “becoming ubiquitous in Madison, whether that’s through our spirits or community involvement,” Mleziva says. “Our goal is to continue to grow our presence in the market until we are fully integrated into the community.”
In the meantime, State Line’s lounge offers a welcoming, pretense-free setting to learn more about spirits and distilling science — and enjoy a damn fine cocktail.
Ilana Natasha
Mike McDonald reigns behind the bar.
Rustic classics
State Line’s cocktail lounge has a rustic-industrial vibe. It’s lined with wood reclaimed from an old barn in DeForest, offset by exposed piping and hanging metal artwork that draws the eye to the wall behind the bar.
Mike McDonald is often behind the bar, too, though he wears different hats around the distillery. He came on about three years ago to help John Mleziva design and decorate the lounge area, and set out to create a warm, welcoming atmosphere.
“It feels like you’re in a barrel, or a barn,” he says. “All of those things play into what we’re doing here with spirits. John and I had a goal of creating a place where people can come and be comfortable and have a community.”
The absence of TVs encourages people to engage with each other, instead of screens. Real interactions are also promoted by trivia night on Thursdays, occasional musical performances and spirit-release parties.
Aside from being a social space, the lounge is geared toward showcasing State Line’s spirits. The cocktail menu features a rotating list of originals, but focuses mostly on staples like the West Indies Sour (angostura bitters, vodka, lemon, orgeat), Sprezzatura Forte (gin, sweet vermouth, aperitivo) and a riff on the Tom Collins (barreled gin, cherry, orange, angostura bitters).
“All the best cocktail places are built on the classics,” McDonald says. “The key is fresh and whole ingredients as much as possible. There’s no funny stuff; we don’t get the bottled juice, we don’t freeze it. We juice daily. Our syrups are all made in-house, with a couple of exceptions. ...Ninety-nine percent of what goes into our cocktails is made here.”
Working strictly with what’s produced on-site creates limitations for State Line’s bartenders. Such cocktails as the Whiskey Sour and Old Fashioned are off the table for now, since the first batch of single-malt whiskey is still barrel-aging. (McDonald anticipates State Line’s whiskey selling so quickly that he probably won’t be able to “play around with it” behind the bar for more than a couple of days, anyway.)
But it’s important to stick with their own stuff, McDonald says. In that sense, the cocktail lounge itself is a product of State Line’s grain-to-glass principles.
“It’s a challenge,” he says, “but it makes us one of the most distinctive bars in the city.”
— H.H.
