Introduction
Phillips Distilling Company (est. 1912) is a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based distillery. What began as a distributor of newspapers, candy and tobacco, Phillips now produces and markets over 70 different spirits products around the globe such as Vodka, Gin, Rum, Canadian whisky, Brandy and many flavours of Schnapps.
In the last years Phillips has launched an assortment of special and innovative brands, for instance Gin-Ka, a combination of gin and vodka, Revel Stoke Spiced Whisky, Phillips Union Whiskey, and vodkas like UV Vodka and the handcrafted and organic Prairie Vodka. In 2008 Phillips launched Prairie Organic Vodka as a luxury brand that, according to company, would pay tribute to Minnesota’s agricultural heritage. Another…show more content… Some vodkas are made from potatoes, molasses, soybeans, grapes, rice, sugar beets and sometimes even byproducts of oil refining or wood pulp processing. Today most vodkas are produced from grains such as sorghum, corn, rye or wheat.
For Prairie Vodka corn was chosen as the base. It comes from roughly 900 members of a farmer cooperative that owns the Chippewa Valley Ethanol Company in Benson, Minnesota.
Most farmers live within 50 miles of the plant. To call their product organic, those farmers have to grow their corn by strict standards. This means that the corn is free of chemicals, is not grown from genetically modified seed and no artificial fertilizer is used.
Manufacturing
After the harvest, the corn is brought to the farmer-owned distillery. The co-op converts leftover corncobs into fuel to power the stills and returns the leftover distillers grains to local farmers for use as feed.
After the neutral spirit, with around 94-96% alcohol, is distilled at the distillery in Benson, it is transported in trucks to the United States Distilled Products Company (USPD) in Princeton, the holding company of Phillips Distilling. In order to make it drinkable, water is added to the spirits to decrease the alcohol percentage to
