For Local Couple, Brewing Wines and Spirits is a Family Affair

If life hands you a lemon, make vodka, gin or brandy –at least that's what the Rye YMCA's Laura Tiedge is doing with her husband Ed, an ex-Marine Corps artillery officer who left the service and Wall Street to put his college math and physics background to work in a third career more to his spirited liking.

The endeavor involves making commercially viable booze from scratch while juggling the cost of launching a start up in a down economy. If necessity is the mother of invention, that necessity nurtured Laura's maternal instincts because she helped her husband give birth to their own distillery when he was looking to start his new career.

Laura, senior director of Healthy Lifestyles at the Rye YMCA, became CTO (as in chief tasting officer) when her husband began brewing booze in pots in their home while searching for the right flavor. Those early tests resulted in producing their vodka, gin and brandy brands soon to be marketed commercially by their StilltheOne distillery, which is named after one of the couple' favorite songs in college.

Along the way, Laura and Ed –who met and fell in love as students at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in the early 1980s—ran into more than their share of life's ups and downs.

When they were trying to keep their heads above water financially, for example, while trying to bankroll their new distillery on the proverbial shoe string, Laura, an ace high school, college and masters swimmer, had to undergo surgery for a stress fracture in her shoulder.

While she was recovering from that surgery, she sublimated her urge to swim by stepping up her running until she was on her way to competing in marathons and triathlons.

All of which led to a stress fracture in her heel. Which, in turn, led to her walking around on crutches as she continued her full-time Rye YMCA work. Her demanding YMCA job means Laura kept right on running, directing and managing all the Rye YMCA healthy lifestyles programming while developing and overseeing a $1 million plus budget and supervising a team of more than 60 full and part- time staff.

When getting around on crutches began throwing off Laura's shoulder, she scrapped the crutches for a scooter that enabled her to get around.

Meanwhile, Ed had walked away from his job as a bond portfolio manager during the 2008 stock market plunge and began researching business opportunities online. He and Laura decided to open their distillery after Ed discovered that New York State had changed its laws regulating small distilleries so that the cost for a three-year license had plunged from $50,000 to $1,500.

To date, their start-up venture has included getting a license from the federal government, a license for an experimental plant and a license from the state that will soon enable them to put their products on the shelves of liquor stores and bars across lower Westchester, including Ralph's on Forest Avenue and Post Road Liquors in Rye.

All of which has given Ed additional time to experiment, blending various combinations of water, honey and yeast while waiting for the final licensing.

Over the course of the past year or so, Ed has come up with marketable recipes –approved by Laura's taste buds—to make, among other sellable drinks, their vodka brand called COMB, as in honeycomb, a combination that includes honey and yeast.

Tastings at various liquor stores and bars up and down the county have resulted in endorsements for their final product.

In the midst of all this, Laura's mother died. Ed helped at home raising their two kids and kept right on brewing in pots in the couple's kitchen until he finally got the formulas right. He gradually reached the point where they had to buy the expensive vats needed to brew big time so they could launch their distillery.

"Not unless you sell your toy first," said Laura told Ed, keeping her management-trained eye on the bottom line.

Which leads us to the tale of Ed's Porsche, its sale, and how –quite by chance—that sale led to Ed's apprenticing at several distilleries in Europe. All of which led to him graduating from a California brewing school and attending many distillery seminars with other budding entrepreneurs, and buying a waterfront factory on the Byram River in nearby Port Chester as the distillery site.

 "The Porsche was my trophy from my big money Wall Street bonus days, probably the only day of the year I enjoyed working on stress-filled Wall Street until I decided it wasn't what I wanted to do with my life," Ed recalled. "Laura was right. The Porsche was a toy, a luxury I had to sell if we wanted to make the distillery work, even on a shoe string."

So he put the Porsche up for sale on the Internet. That led to numerous disappointing offers, including a near sale from a California restaurateur until the character admitted he was in bankruptcy and wanted to pay half in cash and the rest in vintage cases of wine.

That near miss left Ed so discouraged that he didn't even pay attention to an e-mailed bid from someone with addresses in Lichtenstein, France and Switzerland. The next day that would-be buyer called and asked why Ed hadn't responded. Ed said he felt the offer wasn't legitimate. The caller said it was and requested permission to send a mechanic by to check out the car. Ed agreed. The mechanic liked what he saw and gave the sale the okay.

As the sale was going through, Ed researched the buyer and found out that, among other business ventures, he owned a distillery in France. So Ed e-mailed the buyer and told him that he was about to launch his own distillery. They began a rapport over the Internet–so much so that the buyer invited Ed to Europe to study the distillery process from start to finish at his plants as his guest. Ed stayed with his family in their various homes.

That proved to be the turning point because Ed learned so much first hand working with his European benefactor that he came home ready to take the plunge as he and Laura launched their business.

"Taking the plunge" is an apt description because, as all this was going on, Laura has helped shape the ultra-successful Rye YMCA Waveryders swim team. She is also head coach of the ALE Swim and Dive Team and a senior coach for Total Immersion Swimming Limited. She also has teaching credentials in secondary education from the University of California, Irvine.

Her ability to successfully multi-task has won her the admiration of her Rye YMCA colleagues.

"Laura has real administrative management ability, and has been especially successful in helping build the YMCA's Activate America program locally," said Charles Clute, YMCA Health and Wellness Projects Coordinator.

"Laura's a real people person, genuinely committed, totally involved and truly inspirational," added Diana Vita, Associate Health and Fitness Director.

Laura and Ed have learned how to prioritize their time so they can make their varied careers work.

So they usually start their day with a swim at the Rye YMCA pool before he heads over to Port Chester to their distillery to check on what's brewing. They are currently awaiting final approval from the Port Chester Planning Commission and the Waterfront Zoning Commission so they can start selling their finished products. That gives Ed time to finalize his latest recipes for gin and brandy.

"We are looking for not only what would make the best wine but would also make the best spirit," he said.

He has learned a lot about how the right soil, the right climate, the right vintage, the right vats and a lot more goes into making the right product. But he thinks the right research and recipes are just as important. He said he has done his homework along those lines, but admits that his secret ingredient are Laura's taste buds.

"She won't let me go ahead unless the product is eminently drinkable and sellable," he said.

So Laura keeps sipping and testing –in moderation, of course –while she holds down her day job helping build the mind, body and spirit at the Rye YMCA while concentrating on a different kind of spirit building in her off hours at the StilltheOne family distillery.