Attacking complicated problems is nothing new to chemist Michael Wyrsta.
The “Gaucho purebred” — who earned both his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. at UCSB — lends his considerable talents to developing vaccines, solar energy cells, green carbon technology and eco-friendly building materials, and turning natural gas into gasoline and green carbon technology. Now, he’s turning his talents to creating RND Vodka, which hit the shelves of Santa Barbara restaurants and retailers over the summer.
Leslie Dinaberg: How on earth did you decide to start this vodka company?
Michael Wyrsta: (Laughs) That is a really good question. … I was in a liquor store looking at all the stuff on the shelf, and I thought it was pretty unfortunate that all of the brands were imports. I mean the good stuff. … I was, like, “Why don’t we have something up there that people like or … people respect or just think that there is some kind of cachet to it?”
So then I went to lunch with my, friend Mark Collins, and I said, “You know, this is lame. We should have our own great American vodka.” He said, “Yeah, we should. Let’s do it.”
Seriously, it was a snap decision.
LD: To try to do it on your own.
MW: Yeah. I wrote a check right there, and we just started working on it.
LD: Wow.
MW: We didn’t know anything about making vodka at that time, and we quickly learned about it. For me, as a chemist, it’s easy to understand the chemistry part of it. … But in terms of how do you put a package together, how do you do all of this stuff, we had a lot of stumbling blocks.
Then we got our art director, Kim Kavish, involved, and she’s great. She corrected a lot of the mistakes we’ve made in the design. Then there was a long process of licensing.
LD: So, about a year ago you came up with the idea. Did you start developing the product at the same time you started developing the identity?
MW: Exactly. We have a distillery in Colorado that we worked on our formulation with. … We ferment our sugar source, which comes from corn, and then go the whole process — fermentation, distillation, purification. We use really good Colorado spring water. It’s really clean, it’s really pure, and we do our own filtration. So we do the whole process from grain to bottle.
Then it became a logistic thing. We had to develop the identity, develop the formulation, and then develop the logistics to support all that because we wanted it to be a unique bottle.
LD: It’s definitely a unique shape. I can also see where this would stand out in a bar. A lot of vodkas have really pretty designs, but they’re just white.
MW: Exactly. They fade. We call that snoozing on the shelf.
LD: It seems like you’re getting a lot of recognition — including a piece in Sunset Magazine — especially for how early in the process it is.
MW: Yes, we just launched end of July/early August.
LD: What part of your time is this endeavor?
MW: It does take a lot of my time right now. … I have two other companies. A CO2 company, and I also am the CEO and president of a vaccine company in San Diego, so I have quite a bit of responsibility with that and I’m really busy. That’s OK; I like doing all that stuff. For us, it’s just something we have to do until we get up to speed. My wife, Inez, and my best friend, Lindy Lindstrom, really help a lot, too.
LD: With high-end vodka, is the push more on being in bars and restaurants vs. liquor stores and grocery stores?
MW: We have to be in all of them. We have to be everywhere, because they both support each other. … We are an ultra-premium vodka, we’re handmade, so we have more costs. We don’t do mega-scale, which a lot of people do. So in that respect, we’re focused on higher-end stores, higher-end restaurants just because of the clientele.
It’s not different than a bottle of wine. If you get a good bottle of wine from Santa Barbara, it’s really expensive, but you’re getting something that’s really high quality.
I’m a scientist, so what I’d like to do is when we get some real money coming in and profits, part of our goal is to donate some of our profits to science education here in Santa Barbara.
LD: That’s great.
MW: Which would probably be through UCSB or at that level.
LD: I was thinking about that because I do a lot of fundraising for the elementary schools, and I can see people objecting to donations from a liquor company.
MW: And that’s OK. I wouldn’t be against doing anonymous donations because I understand there’s a perception issue, and we wouldn’t want to be encouraging kids to drink vodka at all. This is isn’t a 9 a.m. vodka; this is a high-end sipping vodka. We’re not promoting that lifestyle.
But for me, at least, science is really important, and it is to the company, too. In a philosophical sense, to us, science is one of the few things that has been giving us answers. We look to it when there is trouble. For example, whether or not it’s global warming, we’re looking toward a whole bunch of solutions, but obviously science plays a part in that.
For example, look at the swine flu. We’re looking for a vaccine to help us out, or a drug. People look to science for answers for really discrete problems … It’s just sort of a way of thinking about problems and how to solve them. It’s not about displacing any other belief system or a way of living, just taking stock on how we look at the world and addressing problems head-on. I think that’s important for us, and if this is a vehicle to help do that, that’s great.
LD: Absolutely.
MW: If we can give something back, that would be great. That’s how we’re trying to position it and work it. I live here, Mark lives here, Kim lives here. … We’re always supporting local events. We did the museum nights, for example. We like to support the arts, too, we’ve done Santa Barbara Trustees and the UCSB Alumni Association, so we try to be involved in all that stuff.
LD: My best gauge of how good a vodka is, is usually how I feel the next day. How does one tell a good vodka from a not-so-good one in terms of taste?
MW: I’m not a heavy drinker, and I’m kind of a wimp when it comes to hard alcohol, so for me I wanted the smoothest, easiest drink of vodka. Ultimately, if it’s going to go in a mix or if you’re going to drink it straight, you want it to be able to mix well with everything and you want to be able to drink it on the rocks or with just a little bit of something. … It has to be really smooth, and it has to have a really low burn and really light feeling. … It’s an interesting spirit because it’s very neutral in a lot of ways, but what most people don’t notice is there’s a harsh feeling, a burn with a lot of lower-end vodkas, and that’s a function of what’s in it. There are other molecules that are in vodka typically that produce that feeling.
We’ve come up with a formulation that allows us to have a smoother, lighter feeling. Sunset Magazine recently described it as “ethereal,” and that’s a good way of describing it.
LD: You’re launching in Santa Barbara at a really good time. There’s this trend of Farmers Market cocktails where people are using all of these fresh ingredients and sort of the sweet with the sour with the savory — all of this kind of wild stuff.
MW: I think it’s great. It follows that whole foodie trend, so they want high-quality drinks with really fresh ingredients.
LD: How did you come up with the RND Vodka name?
MW: RND fit a lot with my background in science and markets and also funding science. It’s a play on research and development, clearly, but it’s also cool because on your gearbox in a car it’s always RND, reverse, neutral and drive. So I always thought that was a cool little thing with both the science and the way you see it every day in your car.
… We wanted to make it a little bit more ambiguous vs. just research and development where you would use an ampersand typically. People might be able to come up with their own names for it: Rebels Never Die or Restores Natural Desires. There are so many things that people have come up with, we have a bunch of them on our Facebook site.
LD: What do you do when you’re not working?
MW: I love mountain biking. I surf if there’s surf. … I love the ocean and the mountains, so I take advantage of both of those.
LD: If you could pick three adjectives to describe yourself, what would they be?
MW: Oh, no. Three adjectives. … Busy, really busy. I also think I’m creative and hopeful.
Vital Stats: Michael Wyrsta
Born: July 6, 1974, in Rochester, N.Y.
Family: Wife Inez
Civic Involvement: Donates to a number of organizations, including the UCSB Alumni Association, CALPIRG, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Acts of Love-Autism Speaks and the Trustee Association of Santa Barbara.
Professional Accomplishments: Graduated from UCSB in 1996 with a bachelor of science degree in microbiology and received a Ph.D. in materials from UCSB in 2002; chemist for startup ventures, including GRT Inc., SBA Materials and BioSolar Inc.; president and founder of RND Spirits Inc.
Best Book You’ve Read Recently: Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Little-Known Fact: “I’ll give you two. I went to a Jesuit high school, and I had long, blond dreadlocks right before I got my Ph.D.”
[Noozhawk’s note: Wyrsta and the RND Vodka crew will celebrate an RND Recession Reception with rolled-back prices from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. Friday at James Joyce, 513 State St.]
— Noozhawk contributor Leslie Dinaberg can be reached at leslie@lesliedinaberg.com.