San Jose’s 10th Street Distillery is a small-batch success: Pizarro

10th Street Distillery CEO Virag Saksena set out to make a great whiskey he didn't have to wait 20 years to enjoy. Here's how he did it.

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When Virag Saksena was 5 years old, his father gave him a sip of his Scotch and soda hoping a small taste would persuade the boy to avoid the perils of whiskey.

Boy, did that backfire.

This summer, Saksena and his business partner Vishal Gauri — both engineers — opened 10th Street Distillery in a non-descript industrial park a few miles south of downtown San Jose. It’s there that their small operation produces about a barrel of single malt whiskey every day, a true Silicon Valley spirit that’s showing up on the shelves of craft cocktail bars and restaurants and winning awards in competitions.

An infrastructure software troubleshooter by trade, Saksena was a seasoned lover of Scotch whiskey and a homebrewer when he decided in 2011 to try his hand at making his own spirits. He only had one problem. “I knew how to make good beer, but I didn’t know anything about how to make whiskey,” he said.

So Saksena went to the Islay region of Scotland for a two-week apprentice program to learn the ins and outs of distilling. One thing he learned, though, was that by following traditional methods, he would be an old man by the time he could enjoy his own spirit. “I didn’t want to make a whiskey and have to sit and wait 20 years, so the next four or five years I figured out what I needed to do to create a great tasting whiskey in less time,” Saksena said.

Enter Gauri — his dorm roommate in college — a chemical engineer who provided the expertise they needed to solve the problem. Saksena concedes that they approached it like a software problem — how do you change the code to get the desired result? Another whiskey fan with a nuanced palate, Gauri jumped into the venture gladly.

“I was in the software world, I was on the investing side of things for a while, but this gave me an opportunity to go back to my chemical roots,” Gauri said. “What more interesting thing can you do with a chemical degree than make a great whiskey?”

It took nearly five years to develop a spirit they were happy with — one that was aged for just over a year. And then came the challenge of finding a place to establish a full-size distillery with room for barrels, bottles, fermenters and giant copper stills. In 2018, there were more than 1,500 craft distilleries in the United States — a number that’s growing — with about 10 percent of those in California alone. And the process of opening a licensed distillery is complicated.

After about a year, they settled on San Jose, which had the right utility infrastructure, a city government looking for more craft businesses and a 6,500 square foot space in an industrial part of town. While they considered several potential names for six months, 10th Street Distillery was the right fit and embodied their identity as an “urban” American distillery. “Only in cities in the United States do you find numbered streets like that,” Saksena said.

The peated malt barley they use is imported from Scotland, but they specify a malt that works better with San Jose’s infamously alkaline-heavy water, meaning they don’t have to treat the water as some breweries do. The result is an American single malt whiskey with clear Scottish underpinnings. It’s golden — the color comes from aging in bourbon barrels — and slightly smoky with hints of fruit and citrus.

Despite being open for just a few months, they’re already disrupting the booze business in typical Silicon Valley fashion. The 92-proof spirit won Best in Class Gold from Whiskies of the World and a Double Gold from the New York World Spirits and Wine competition. Downtown San Jose craft cocktail bars like Haberdasher, Paper Plane, Five Points and Miniboss all carry it, as does Lexington House and The Bywater in Los Gatos and Alexander’s Steakhouse in Cupertino. A 750ml bottle retails for $65 and it’s available at various liquor stores around the Bay Area, including Total Wine & More.

Gauri says he’s heard from bartenders who are thankful to have a South Bay spirit they can recommend to customers. “Our object is to make a product that would make the area proud,” said Gauri.

IMPERIAL VISIT: Former San Jose Congressman and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta and his wife, Deni, are flying to Tokyo this weekend for the enthronement of Emperor Naruhito on Oct. 22. Mineta, who also served as San Jose’s mayor in the 1970s, is one of just a few hundred foreign dignitaries invited to attend the ceremony, for which Mineta is required to wear white-tie formal attire. “I have to wear a top hat and everything,” Mineta said.

Coincidentally, there will be two people at the event who have held the Transportation cabinet post, as current Secretary Elaine Chao will be the official representative of the United States.

HACKING AWAY: I saw a friend this week who was fielding a barrage of phone calls and emails from contacts who were perplexed at his email requesting gift cards for his niece. After he figured out what happened, he just started answering the phone, “Hello, my email was hacked.” Fortunately, the bad news was limited to the frustrating task of responding to bewildered folks who were at least diligent enough to check. “I feel like moving into a cave,” said the guy, whose name I’m not using. He’s had enough identity problems this week.