For all the barrels of gold-medal bourbon and whiskey rolling out of Detroit City Distillery, its latest expansion was largely made possible by a seasonal vodka built around raspberry paczki.
Consider this a toast to that.
I’m not specifically saluting Paczki Day Vodka, or paczki in general, though I’m a fan of both. Likewise, I like DCD’s top-selling product, Butcher’s Cut Bourbon, and I like that the new addition to the spirits factory on Gratiot Avenue already smells faintly like open bottles of it.
What I’ll drink to is how the company has stayed smart, local and true to its roots: a bachelor party at a rustic cabin outside Blind River, Ontario, celebrating a wedding that had already been called off.
“We’ve been profitable since the first year,” said partner and distiller-in-chief J.P. Jerome, 42, with the same ownership group of eight friends from the Bath High School Class of 2001.
They’ve maintained the simple guiding philosophy they concocted around a campfire — make what they like to drink, and pour profits back into the business — while adding splashes of whimsy to a serious and competitive venture.
Their latest adult step involves taking over the adjoining former home of Detroit Vineyards, which used to be the Stroh’s Ice Cream factory and before that a Goebel brewery.
The official debut of the facility they’re calling 100 Proof is an invitation-only open house on Thursday, July 10. They’ll show off a new tasting room, a second event space, heaps of warehouse capacity and potential offices.
Not far away, if you know where to look, is a life-size cutout of Andre the Giant on a storage tank.
Cheers.
‘Gimmicks’ pad bottom line
The existing event space upstairs hosts more than 75 weddings a year, said operations director Alyssa Young, because “who doesn’t want to get married in the middle of a bunch of whiskey barrels?”
They’re attractive, actually, and expensive, and a reminder that distilling is a tough racket. “It’s about four years,” Jerome noted, “before a barrel becomes revenue.”
The new event space uses barrel staves as decor on the base of a long bar, but is otherwise industrial, with walls of brick and cinder block, and huge pipes that at least used to be hooked up to something.
A section of an expansion area of Detroit City Distillery is seen in Detroit on Monday, July 7, 2025.
At one end of the ample room a few days before the opening, an installer was testing an illuminated sign with the same message that has appeared around the neck of every bottle since DCD opened a cocktail bar with a small still in Eastern Market.
That was 2013, otherwise noted for Detroit filing bankruptcy, and the bar on Riopelle Street remains busy even after most production moved to what’s known as The Whiskey Factory a mile away.
“Taste the History,” the sign says. “Toast to Revival.”
On the wall opposite the neon sign, the wine company left behind a ceiling-high hardwood shelving unit that distillery manager Steve Orzechowski was filling with bottles of DCD’s bourbon, rye, vodka, gin and rum.
Orzechowski, 40, of Dearborn, likes to enjoy himself in Hamtramck. One Fat Tuesday last decade he was at Small’s Bar, known for injecting vodka into paczki, and inspiration struck with the force of a hangover.
“I was like, ‘Let’s put paczki in the vodka,'” he thought. Real Hamtramck paczki, straight into the still.
Ten experimental bottles became 100, then 1,000, then 5,000, then 10,000, and now there’s an annual run of twice that with an outdoor celebration on Riopelle in February on the Saturday before Paczki Day.
The distillery sells 10,000 cases of liquor a year, Jerome said, with 12 bottles in each, and some 20% of that total is “the gimmicks” — paczki, a bottled Old Fashioned with Achatz 4-Berry pie, Flower Day Vodka with lavender and lemon.
The focus remains whiskey and bourbon, he said, but would the expansion have been possible without the toy department?
He pondered for a moment and decided, “I don’t think so.”
Generations and gratitude
Jerome is the only one of the eight partners with a Ph.D. in microbiology, the only one who draws a salary from DCD, and the only one whose grandfather’s picture is on the label of Butcher’s Cut Bourbon.
John “Yogi” Jerome was the second of what’s now five Johns in the family lineage. He was a butcher in Eastern Market, and he’s one of the reasons the distillery is tied to Detroit.
J.P., for John Paul, commutes from Dexter, where a local farm supplies all of the company’s rye — and where his wife, Rose, who works in community education, “can’t stand whiskey.”
A life-size photo of Andre the Giant is seen on a barrel as distiller Rex Harrison works on cleaning an area while waiting for whiskey to finish at Detroit City Distillery in Detroit on Monday, July 7, 2025. The business is holding a grand opening party for its expansion on Thursday, July 10. Multiple wrestling photos and figures are seen throughout the business due to the employees’ love for the sport.
He still loves it, Jerome said, and he still loves making it, even as big companies are confusing the market with new brands designed to look small.
“There was nothing,” he said, just an idea that could have wafted away with the campfire smoke. “Now 25 or 30 people have a job, including me.”
He’ll raise a glass to that, yes indeed.
Neal Rubin is the designated lightweight in any group, the fellow who rarely finishes his first drink and can always be trusted to drive home. Reach him at NARubin@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit City Distillery expansion fueled by founding pledge, paczki