Mary Toney, from left, Diane Paulson and David Eliasen bottle and label Organic Nation Vodka in their office in the Hersey Industrial Park on April 24. Photos by Thom Larkin | Daily Tidings

Diane Paulson, president, owner, CEO, and chief bottle-washer of Cascade Peak Spirits, has opened a distillery in Ashland brewing vodka.

"We started brewing over cocktails in the summer of 2006," Paulson said. "In September of 2007, we were developing a business plan, going to workshops and researching the whole distilling industry."

Paulson and her partner, David Eliasen, looked at the growing organic food industry and decided, "If I can eat organic food, why wouldn't I want to have organic booze?"

The new business has a total of three partners, eight stockholders who are friends and two full-time employees.

From left to right, owners David Eliasen, Diane Paulson, and Mary Toney brew, bottle and label Organic Nation Vodka in their office space in the Hersey Industrial Park.

A loan from Southern Oregon Regional Economic Development, Inc. helped the business plan come to fruition, Paulson said. SOREDI is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the long-term prosperity of Jackson and Josephine counties. Since Cascade Peak Spirits will create jobs in the valley and specifically in Ashland, they qualified for a large loan that enabled them to buy the equipment they needed to start producing.

Brewing started Feb. 9 with master distiller Thomas MacKenzie from Alabama. MacKenzie spent time showing the new business owners how to perfect their techniques and get the best taste possible.

"Everything is hand-crafted," Paulson said. "We're a micro distillery; we do everything. We bottle it, label it — every piece is done by our hands."

In staying regional, Paulson and partners are getting their pure spirits from a distillery in Idaho. The spirits are then filtered about six times using coal and other filters. Most people think that vodka is made from potatoes, but most vodka is made by fermenting and then distilling the simple sugars from a mash of pale grain or vegetable matter, according to Tastings, a beverage testing