FEW Spirits is the result of three years’ work or a century of Evanston history, depending on how you look at it. The only distillery in town — and one of only three in Illinois — finds its home in a short alley near the intersection of Chicago Avenue and Main Street.
Prior to World War II, FEW owner Paul Hletko’s grandparents ran a brewery in what is now the Czech Republic. Hletko’s grandfather lost the brewery when he was sent to a Nazi concentration camp with his six brothers and sisters. As the only survivor, he never recovered the business.
Hletko, who has been making beer at home for 20 years, found inspiration to turn his hobby into his livelihood when his grandfather died in 2008.
“I was looking for a way to build on that family legacy, and try to move forward, and try to build something positive instead of always looking in the rearview mirror,” Hletko says.
But he faced a problem. No one before him had succeeded in building a legal still in the home of Prohibition, so Evanston had to relax its laws before he could start his business.
Three years later, Hletko says he’s happy about FEW’s location. It gives him a story, manufacturing liquor just blocks from the house where Frances Willard lived when she ran the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Hletko himself lives two blocks from FEW with his wife and children.
“There have been an awful lot of very notable Evanstonians that have lived here, but I don’t think any of them have the effect on the social fabric of America the same way Frances Willard did,” he says.
FEW shares the initials of Frances Elizabeth Willard, which Hletko says is a coincidence. In reality, he named his business for his plan to stay small. “We don’t make a lot, we make a few,” Hletko says.
The entire industry is small, and Hletko is friends with the owners of Illinois’ other distilleries: Koval in Chicago’s Ravenswood neighborhood and North Shore Distillery in Lake Bluff. Hletko also finds it easier to stand out in the business of spirits than in the more mature business of beer.
His unique products combine old and new. FEW’s most popular bottles are decorated with old-fashioned prints of hot air balloons and Ferris wheels, but the spirits are new whether you compare them to today’s big brands or the bathtub hooch of the Prohibition era. FEW American Gin, for example, has a whiskey base rather than a typical vodka one.
“It’s a lot softer,” Hletko says. “It’s got a lot more citrus and vanilla flavors, a little subtle pepper kick at the end, and it’s very much a whiskey drinker’s gin.”
He also distills bourbon and rye; his white whiskey was awarded the double gold medal at the New York World Wine and Spirits Competition.
Hletko says the business is a lot of work, but he’s having fun. After several months of running the business, he no longer notices the grainy smell of mash and the grinding and steaming sounds of machinery.