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Craft DistilleryCraft Distillery

With this success, the two began making complex ically grown ingredients.”
spirits with clean, rich flavors that they could serve
with food. As a Cordon Bleu-trained chef and food After several years of growing and evolving the
writer, Mathew complemented Khosrovian’s skills business, in 2012, Khosrovian and Mathew moved
as a spirits maker. from their Monrovia location to their current digs, a
14,000 square-foot distillery in the LA Arts District.
“It was a collaborative effort,” Khosrovian told They retired the name “Modern Spirits” and adopt-
Beverage Master Magazine. “I’d make it, she’d try ed the moniker “Greenbar,” a name that fits their
it, I’d fix it.” They began sharing their creations with emphasis on organic products. Instead of buying
their cousins, and when the cousins—and the cous- pre-distilled neutral spirits and infusing them with
ins’ friends—kept coming back for more, and more, local produce as they did in Monrovia, they now
and more, they decided to open their own distill- had the equipment and space to distill their own
ery. That was in 2004, and they’ve been breaking base spirit.
barriers ever since.
Greenbar’s spirits begin with whole ingredients.
Initially, the team created only bottled spirits in “We always use whole ingredients, whether fresh
a 6,000 square-foot warehouse in Monrovia under or dried, because that’s what tastes right to us,”
the brand name Modern Spirits. As the couple Khosrovian said. “In fact, we make the largest vol-
expanded, their products—gin, vodka, tequila, ume of infused products in the U.S.”
rum, whisky, liquors, and amaro—were not typical
run-of-the-mill recipes. From vodka infused with Khosrovian and Mathew, like true artisans, are
midwestern wheat and California pomegranate to deeply committed to their craft. Greenbar, for
whiskeys aged with six kinds of wood, their spirits example, hand-zests more than 2,000 lemons for
were designed to be interesting and complex, with each 1,000 gallon batch of its lemon vodka. “This is
flavor as the main motivation. Initially, they weren’t why people like our products,” Khosrovian added.
necessarily seeking organic products. “They taste real.”

“We primarily bought ingredients from local farms The distillery uses a continuous column still for
for freshness and maximum flavor,” Khosrovian primary distillation. But it’s not the typical column
said, “and over several years, we noticed that the still that one finds at a vodka distiller. “This still
spirits began to taste different. We narrowed the is designed to pull very precise flavors, so it is a
difference down to the flavors; the farmers were unique beast,” Khosrovian said. “We can get very
selling us organic products because they had more geeky with flavors by changing temperatures and
flavor, and they knew that flavor is what we were extracting specific flavors, and then recombining
after. That’s when we made the switch to all organ- them at the end. If you have OCD, this is your

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