This piece was originally published to PiscoLogia's website: https://piscologia.com/
Cynthia and her father at the Alhambra in Granada, 1991
Digging through drawers of loose stacks of photos, lookingto extract a select few of my dad seems fitting, I thought in preparation for this piece. Where are the photos of Kyoto and the cherry blossoms? Or of him grinning at Xochimilco with some Mariachis, about to step onto a trajinera? Some of my earliest memories involve photos of parties, stories of shenanigans
from parties, a gag picture of me on display posed as a toddler with a can of
beer. Beer was a frequent topic of conversation, and my dad provided for me and
the rest of the family scattered across landscape through his work as a malting
chemist turned executive in the Pacific NW. Beer was his life. I was fortunate
to travel with him on business to Europe at sixteen, and to receive a real
kimono as a gift from one of his many trips to Japan to do business with
Suntory. It isn’t figurative to describe him as a guest appearance on Mad Men. At
one of the dinners hosted by Suntory he attended in the mid 80’s, he and his
VPs were accompanied by Geisha, courtesy of a tradition that recognizes women
play valuable roles in forming strong ties. My dad admitted once in
embarrassment that he had blacked out at a business function, though he rarely
drank when doing business because of this type of risk. Yet among his feminine
influences were also volks like the elderly neighborhood frau who made
sauerkraut in a barrel in the back yard when he was a child in “Vancouver USA.”
His respect for the alchemical origins of beer making and monasticism is the link that I most resonate with now, an herbalist in practice, baking spelt bread from a Hildegard de Bingen recipe out of curiosity, or making a hops tincture or chamomile hydrosol. When I made a five-gallon batch of wild rosemead from petals I wildcrafted by hand, I knew how proud he would be that I had taken up an ancient practice for myself. My dad took great pride in the brewing
practices of our ancestors in Germany, as well as in introducing me to modern
practices, industry and all its complexities. He wrote and published an op ed in its defense during the early days ofMothers Against Drunk Driving, which had what he felt were echoes of Prohibition he had recognized with concern.
I studiously walked in his shadow time and again as Italked to him about the growth of the microbrew industry during my early college days, and how his company would or would not adapt. I sensed his footsteps alongside me in Tenochtitlán where he too walked through history, and where I first met who would ultimately become my partner in Pisco Logia, a partnership that drew me in due to the established kinship formed by women in an endeavor to bring Pisco to a larger audience, and who celebrated my first ever bottling with me in his absence when I bottled my mead. Our small, internationally women-owned company is based in Eastern Washington where I ran the wilds as a child among my grandfather’s Kaiser car collection that surfaces now in the ghosts of my memory: a rusty, pastel rainbow row of cars that would look more at home in Havana, Cuba than Spokane, Washington today. The familial persistent memories are something that continue to be a marvelous and undeniable companion in my own relationship with the eau-de-vie.
Having dinner at Reichenstein Castle on the Rhein River in 1988
As I wrap up a meeting with my partners to address thecurrent pressures facing our small distiller in a growing market, I know my dad would be surprised, proud and perhaps aware that he underestimated me. I plan and strategize to best to sit across a legal table in the perceived men’s game of industry and finance, while my true heart sits across tablas y fronteras breaking bread with respect, gratitude and fortaleza for the legal challenges that lie ahead.
Cynthia Vogel is a licensed clinical social worker in private practice and part owner of Pisco Logia. The brand iscurrently facing potential litigation with Mezcal Amaras, a Mezcal brand that recently entered a distribution relationship with Beam Suntory. Her late father, Ronald Vogel was president of Great Western Malting Co., and a Past President of the Master Brewers Association of the Americas