Welcome to our Happy Hour Question & Answer series, where we ask questions to interesting people in the alcohol world.

This week’s spotlight is on Seth Watson, Owner and Founder of Distillery of Modern Art. An innovator who genuinely believes nothing is out of the realm of possibility, Seth Watson is taking his 18 years of hospitality expertise at Track Seven Events and implementing those skills into his newest endeavor, Distillery of Modern Art. A true connoisseur, the conceptualization of DoMA started with a glass of whiskey and was quickly infused with his sentiment for art and music to build the only full-sensory craft distillery.

Hops & Spirits: How did you all get into the alcohol industry?
Seth Watson: I spent nearly 20 years in hospitality. I had a previous business doing lighting, staging, sound, core prop fabrication, set design, furniture building and more. I had gotten kind of bored just doing really cool designs and production for other people and wanted to build a place that that would represent my background in general.

So about 2017 is when we really decided to go ahead and make this kind of work. My initial assumption was, ‘Hey, can I build a events venue and make whiskey?’ That was really the initial thought process there without any sort of knowledge of what can we do? How can we do it? What would this look like? And so that was really the, this leads into the second question here is how did the distillery of modern art, uh, come about?

And for me it was really wanting to lean into passion. Again, spend so much time doing things for other people. The goal was to understand why isn’t more whiskey being made in Atlanta and how can I actually do that?

HS: How did Distillery of Modern Art come to be?
SW: What I first started doing was learning all of the legal boundaries around why there weren’t more distilleries, understanding the law and the state being really backwards and prohibitive of people coming in and starting a new distillery. So, I hired a lawyer really early on to help me navigate some of the red tape. What I found out really early on was that people aren’t doing it because the barrier to entry is just very, very difficult.

There was an opportunity at the time for me to start traveling around the country to go to craft distilleries and either just cold call and say, ‘Hey, I’m in the area. I’d love to come in and spend some time with you.’ Or I was setting up meetings with either distillery owners or distillers to come in saying, ‘look, I want to offer my time. I want to come in and just get hands on, play within the spirits, learn how grains are working, figure out why things are being made here or aren’t being made here.’

I probably visited about 70 distilleries around the country over the course of the next few years leading into the pandemic. And at that same time while I was traveling, I hired some consultants in this industry to help handhold me to work through financial modeling, figure out again what the state allows versus what they don’t allow. Tried to identify some areas in Atlanta that would make sense for doing what we wanted to do and really get a better sense for what I wanted to accomplish.

The initial thought was we’re going to do seven spirits. We’re going to do two different vodkas. We’re going to do a gin and an amaro. Then, three types of whiskey — one that doesn’t really need to be aged, and then two that do. So, five of the seven products could be made rapidly. And then I’d have product available.

And in 2017 when I first said, yeah, I’m going make this happen, law started to change. So, I had briefly sketched an idea of what I wanted this place to look like. Had no idea on branding at the time or exactly what it was going to look like. But I mapped out what a space would look like.

It was just a generic space, not necessarily the building we’re in now. And the law at the time was that you could not serve drinks in a manufacturing facility and you were allowed to do a tasting, but it had to be free and you couldn’t pour more than a one-ounce sample. Then the law changed, which was brilliant because then I was able to incorporate the idea of a cocktail bar on site.

HS: What’s it like blending a distillery, art gallery, cocktail lounge and event space together?
SW: I see spirits and art literally at the same level. They’re both very much subjective. So when I thought about what kind of mission can us as a distillery have we make alcohol? What are we really doing for the community? And so I wanted to bring that art piece back in because I thought, how else can I represent this brand of a more upscale, more interesting and more modern way than to incorporate art into everything that we do.

Because, as most people will tell you, distilling is part art form, part science. So, let’s work with that art form. So as designing this building out, I wanted to dedicate a space specifically to local artists. The idea was I bet I can draw a ton of attention to this building by having local artists incorporated in this building in some manner. One being providing that space for free because I was thinking about that financial transaction they always spoke about. And it was never a real relationship with a vendor or with anybody else. It was always based on, ‘yeah, we think your art’s super cool, but it’s going to benefit us financially. So we’ll go with that.’ So, I thought, what better way than to help highlight these people than to not take a commission from them because then there’s a real relationship.

We’re all about the art and science. There’s an easy incorporation of art and all its forms. But then I have a dedicated space where I can highlight these people and not take money out of their pockets.

So, the idea for the event space, which was one of the most initial pieces of this, of this part, was I like to create experiences. That’s what I spent my whole life doing. The idea was for people to be able to create their own experience within our ethos.

You came to the bar and had a cocktail. You saw the event space, now you’re going to come back and have a wedding, a corporate event. You’re going to come back for that. Let’s say you’ve come out of the blue for an event. You then see the cocktail bar, you see the distillery, you want to come back for a drink or you’ve come for a tour of this building, you then stayed for a cocktail. You’ve come back to enjoy the art. So, it’s this reciprocal opportunity within the building to do different things and a reason to come back for ’em.

HS:  When it comes to the spirits, what spirits were you wanting to make?
SW: Whiskey is my first love. I fell in love with the category, loved the idea that this was a product that can be made with some simple ingredients, but took years to mature. I wanted to know the history. I wanted to know the science. I just wanted to know everything I could.

I like to think of myself as a lifelong learner and something like that that has a lot of mystique behind it and a lot of confusion and a lot of great marketing. My goal is to find out everything I could have about it.

The idea at first was bourbon and rye was what I wanted to make because it was such an interesting category. As we look to expand that, we sort of really honed in on the idea of building a distillery. Vodka seemed easy because everybody needs one.

I enjoy being out and enjoying myself and I love an after-dinner drink. I started to really get into the Amaro category. It’s herbal liqueur, very Italian, so many different varieties of them. And I said, well, why don’t we make one? Why don’t we put out an awesome American Amaro that somehow speaks to the state. After trying every Amaro on the market, more or less, I wanted to do something specific for Georgia as an initial launch. If we’re doing a peach flavored vodka, why not use that same peach and blend a beautiful style Amaro that’s both bitter and sweet.

Gin is my second favorite outside of whiskey. And we also wanted to create a gin that was more palatable for the non-gin drinker. There’s a lot of negative views to gin. Where once I started having good gin, I was like, wow, people need to know about better gin, so why not create one?

HS: What’s it been like to receive accolades for several of your spirits?
SW: It’s been humbling. And we were very specific about which contests we’d be in and any sort of awards that we’d be involved in. There’s a lot in our industry that if you just pay to play, you’re going to get placed with some sort of medal. And that for us being in some of these competitions, the goal is for the industry to provide feedback. It’s nice to get an award. It’s a nice to call something award-winning, which everything that we’ve put out has won something. So those are great, but the feedback from them is what we really care about. We want to know outside of these four walls how people are actually receiving these spirits. We’ve gotten some great feedback from them.

HS: You enjoy bourbon/whiskey, how hard is it to be patient to let those come of age and share them out?
SW: When you open a distillery of two routes, you can either go buy an old stock from somebody else just to quickly put something in a market, hope to blend whatever you’re creating over time until it’s just your product. I didn’t want to do any of that.

For us, it was let’s put the effort in upfront and we’re either going to live or die on our own hill. So people will either love what we put out period, or they don’t.

It is very tough to wait to get back to the actual question. But the result in just putting out something that we can stand behind 100% from literal grain to bottle, we’ve been completely in control of that process. Patience is hard. I can’t wait to share the brown spirits, but the reward and the result of that will be much better.

HS: What products are coming down the road?
SW: We released just a few months ago our corn whiskey. We purposely are doing a white corn that we just love. The grain is coming out of Asheville, North Carolina. Most corn whiskeys are usually yellow corn. Just basic. We used an heirloom white corn, which is different, as it has its own sweet subtleness to it.

Then, what we’re doing with that series is each batch is going to have a different finish to it. So, the one we put out was finished over a Brazilian wood, very much baking spice forward. Very unique. A lot of bourbons have been being finished in them, but no one’s gone with just corn whiskey.

So what we’re trying to do is change people’s opinion of just what a one grain spirit actually tastes like. People confuse it with moonshine, which it is not at all. If you actually produce something legally, there’s no way to call it moonshine. That’s just now a marketing term. It’s not some grand pappy make it in the woods.

We’re trying to get rid of the stigma of what corn whiskey is by showcasing it in a very high-end way. So each batch now is going to have a different finish. Some will be done in rye barrels, some were done with the Brazilian wood. Some will be in old beer barrels. The idea is to release an entire series of interesting corn whiskey so people could actually taste what a really good, well-produced spirit made out of corn tastes like. We’ll continue to release those in 2024.

Rye will be released in 2024 as well. It’ll be ready to go. And then from a new spirit perspective, we’re looking at doing a couple different versions of rum and then eventually an agave based spirit. So “tequila”, but made in America.

HS: If folks are interested in purchasing your products, how can they do that?
SW: We want to be as big as humanly possible. We want to do it organically and we want to make sure that we have a proof of concept that our spirits are well received. Our goal was to own our backyard, be well received in the state, to a point where people are asking about us elsewhere.

We want to offer it to everybody, but distribution is different in every single state. And we wanted to release it online so that we can see if there’s concentrations of people actually ordering our products and then hone in on getting distribution in those states. So it’s more or less market research and we have people who come and visit us from out of town and want to be able to get it in their state. Now they have the ability to do so.

Distilleryofmodernart.com– everything you need. Same way to find us on social. Our website has our store directly on it. You can also link to it through both our Instagram and Facebook.