Life of Reilley Disco Lemonade the first canned cocktail approved for a farm distillery in New York
BY Jason Emerson
Editor
The Cazenovia Farmers Market last week went disco — Disco Lemonade that is.
Last Saturday, July 23, Life of Reilley Distilling and Wine Company officially released its much-anticipated new canned cocktail made of raspberry vodka, fresh lemonade and locally grown mint at the market, complete with a disco ball, 70s clothing and Bee Gees music playing to complete the festive mood.
People from across upstate had been telling LOR co-owner Ben Reilley they would be at the farmers market because they could not wait to sample his newest creation — which is also the first “Ready to Drink” cocktail ever approved for a farm distillery in New York state.
“If the online reaction [to the Disco release] is any indication, there might be a line around the block,” said Reilley last week. “It’s going to be a party; it’ll be a blast. I’m going to the Salvation Army on Friday to buy a wide collared shirt, some gold chains and I’m going to try to find couple of wigs for everybody too. It’s just going to be a celebration. It’s going to be wild.”
LOR’s Disco Lemonade has been two years in the making while the company established its reputation for making quality premium, vanilla and raspberry vodka. Headquartered in Trush Office Park in Nelson, LOR has grown from a Central New York brand to one sold by eight distributors in 42 counties across New York state, and requests for distribution in states throughout the U.S.
Their vodka can be found in liquor stores, bars and restaurants throughout the DeWitt, Fayetteville and Manlius areas.
But Disco Lemonade has already gained such a buzz that it will soon be the flagship product for the distillery.
“From starting off with just making a drink with stuff I like and using our friends as guinea pigs, it worked out,” said co-owner Siobhan Reilley, who is also Ben’s wife and an experienced bartender. “I think it’s just because we created another category — there are no other pre-mixed spirit cocktails in New York state — we just paved the way for other craft distilleries to start doing that as well.”
Disco Lemonade was created in 2014 when Ben and Shioban, who are weekly fixtures at the Cazenovia Farmers Market, noticed that people who loved LOR vodka wanted ideas to make mixed drinks out of it. So the Reilleys created their own mixed cocktails from their vodka and offered them at the various food and wine events they attended.
The cocktail, which consists of Life of Reilley raspberry vodka and fresh lemonade soaked for 24 hours in mint leaves sourced from Spruce Ridge Landscape and Nursery in Nelson, has been receiving rave reviews from Life of Reilley consumers for more than a year. The production and canning of the cocktail has been the difficult part, however. That alone has taken another year to bring to fruition.
“It is by far the most frustrating and by far the most rewarding thing I’ve ever worked on in my career,” Ben said. “I completely underestimated how much goes into putting a beverage in a can.”
Once the regulatory red tape was completed, the Reilleys had to get the cocktail canned — a difficult endeavor since only one company cans beverages in all of New York, and the surge in craft wines, beers and ciders in recent years had made that company, The Mobile Can Man, completely booked.
On July 5, the owner of the canning company called Ben and said he could can Disco Lemonade on July 17 at Apple Country Spirits just outside Rochester, so the LOR team had only 11 days to make it happen. On Monday, they drive to Rochester and spent five hours making 210 cases (of 24 cans per case) of Disco Lemonade to be ready for sale on Saturday.
“We could not wipe the smiles off our faces yesterday. We had so much fun with those guys at Apple Country Spirits. It was great.” Siobhan said. “Just starting off with something we liked the taste of and experimenting with the recipe to what it is now, to seeing it being canned yesterday was surreal.”
But the release of Disco Lemonade is only the beginning.
There is now a demand from distributors and outlets across the state to sell Disco Lemonade, and keeping up with the demand will be challenging. In fact, LOR is already planning to move its distillery from Nelson into a space in the village of Cazenovia later this year to be able to increase production but have a retail storefront and offer tours.
“This is what’s going to fuel and fund our expansion and allow us to increase our production,” Ben said. “The fact that people can come into space and see us working, see all of the pistons, fill spouts, all cans flying around and rolling down table and snapping lids on — it’s a very cool, aesthetic thing.”
For now, the LOR team is just focusing on the Saturday release at the farmers market.
“I promised Aileen [Randolph, manager of the Cazenovia Farmers Market] we would do it there because the market been so good to us for the last couple years and we wanted to make our debut there. We also want to help showcase how great a farmers market Cazenovia truly is,” Ben said.
For a two-year-old company that started making vodka in a two-room warehouse space, the release of Disco and the positive statewide reception of their product is something the Reilleys never dreamed.
“Disco is an absolute rocket ship. I feel like I’m literally sitting on a rocket ship and we just lit the fuse. That’s the only way I can describe this,” Ben said. “My emotions are running gamut — relieved, excited, exhausted, humbled — all of them. Almost feels like having another kid come into the world. It’s just a phenomena. I’m having hard time articulating what this means to us.”
Life of Reilley Disco Lemonade will be officially available for purchase at liquor stores, bars and other craft farm breweries starting July 23. It will be available in four-can packages — each can will have 6.5 percent alcohol — that will retail for $12.99, or about $15.
For more information about Life of Reilley Wine and Distilling and its Disco Lemonade, visit their website at lifeofreilley.net, or their Facebook page at Facebook.com/LifeOfReilley.
