Iron Street Distillery Opening Tuesday

(KNSI) – Iron Street Distillery opens Tuesday, representing one of the key pieces to an east side revival in St. Cloud.

Co-Owner John Martens says everything about the business pays homage to the history of the old International Harvester building where it is located.

“We’ve got one called Red Baby Rum. The Red Baby basically was a truck used by the dealerships that were all selling to the farmers, those trucks were brought in through here. And a long story was that we had 162 trucks brought in at the opening time of the building. And it was a big marketing campaign. They had a parade through the city of St. Cloud.”

Minnesota 13, another flavor, is a nod to moonshine made in Stearns County during Prohibition.

Martens says laws and regulations make it tough to run a start-up in the spirits business. Cocktails can only be made from what is produced on-site.

“We’ve had to partner with some of the — brown spirits I call it; bourbon, rye, and the whiskey from Davis Valley out of Virginia. With that we can have more of a portfolio of cocktails behind the bar and then we will focus on the rum, the vodka, and the gin in house and distilling those ourselves.”

Martens gives an example. Iron Street is not yet making vermouth, which keeps most martinis off the menu for now. Eventually there will be regular product innovations and seasonal choices. Martens says distribution through retail outlets could also be an option in the future. Wheat whiskey is about six weeks away.

The 2nd floor will be a wedding venue by summertime, says Martens.

“Eric and Tessa Johnson will own that. It’s a huge space that can host 500 capacity or better. There’s really not a similar large format in St. Cloud that replicates the old style of this building. We’ve got old maple floors that are going to be redone as the mockups are just beautiful. Old brick walls, that old kind of warehouse/industrial look.”

Construction continues on the upper levels of the building. Simonson Lumber uses roughly half of the East St. Germain Street structure’s 64,000 square feet for storage. The hope for sometime years in the future is to expand the cocktail lounge from the first floor to a rooftop spot. Martens says it would be the only venue of its kind in the area.

Martens thought he had made it to a comfortable retirement. He was coaxed back to work by his partner Kevin Johnson after a prior career in the logistics industry. Martens describes the last couple of months as they prepared the location for its grand opening as a whirlwind.

“We’ve had, I would say up to 50 people at a time here working on the building. And so it has been crazy! We’ve all put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in here but it’s finally paying off.”