Recrafting the craft cocktail
By Nate Gartrell
Ten years ago, Napa Valley couple Arthur and Lusine Hartunian took what was likely the biggest risk of their lives: they opened a distillery in the heart of wine country. It was after the Great Recession had forced Arthur out of the insurance industry, in a time when Americans stopped going out as much to save money, and in a state that at the time did not permit the type of drinking establishment the Hartunians envisioned.
“My wife and I did about six minutes of research and jumped right in with money we didn’t have,” Arthur recalled in a recent interview. “There was definitely a bit of a learning curve.”
Despite the odds, nowadays Arthur and Lusine continue to benefit from that decision. They’ve grown their venture, the Napa Valley Distillery, into a household name around the city, and they are weeks away from opening an in-house restaurant called The Hollywood Room. They’ve also started a sister company, Napastak, a cooking and kitchenware boutique.
“We almost went out of business two dozen times in the first couple years,” Arthur said. “We were late on rent, no way to make money because laws at that time didn’t allow [distilleries] to sell direct to consumer, you had to go through a distributor … for years I was going door-to-door, trying to sell one bottle at a time.”
The Napa Valley Distillery crafts its own whiskey, gin, and vodka, but from the beginning, Arthur saw his company as more than just producers of liquor.
“We’re a cocktail company,” Arthur said. “We’re more about hospitality in a way that’s based around spirits. We pride ourselves on accommodating our customers … We’re open every day but Wednesday, but if someone were to walk in on a Wednesday we wouldn’t turn them away, we would make it work somehow.”
Arthur’s interest in spirits started off, fittingly, with an interest in cocktails.
“One of my first jobs out of school was working at a law firm on Hollywood Boulevard…Every night the two partners would go to a restaurant bar downstairs and have cocktails and meet with other lawyers,” Arthur said. “They would have negronis and old fashioned’s, and these were way out of date cocktails at that time.
“I became fascinated by cocktail history, cocktail culture,” he continued. “It wasn’t about drinking to get drunk; it was about enjoying the flavors and the social aspect of the drink.”
It was a world that felt very familiar, Arthur said, given his Armenian heritage. “Armenians rarely eat without drinking and we rarely drink without eating,” he said. “Drinking is really part of our culture, but it’s a cultural instrument, a social tool.”
Arthur became a self-described “cocktail geek.” He started studying bartending not at college, but through research at his local library. Distilling and mixing drinks became a side hobby while he focused on his day job in the insurance industry.
“I never went to bartending school, but I think I can hold my own with the best,” he said. “I was very, very in love with that industry.”
In carving his path to success, Arthur took on the state laws that he argued were holding back artisan distilleries like his. In 2012, he and several other distillery owners formed the California Distillers Guild and started lobbying for the state to pave the way for spirit tasting rooms. The following year, then-Gov. Gerald Brown signed AB 933, allowing distilleries to have tasting rooms, similar to wineries and breweries. In 2018, the guild championed SB 1164, known as the Craft Distillers Act, eliminating a legality that required visitors to distilleries to participate in a tasting event before buying a bottle of liquor, which Arthur and others argued handcuffed small-scale distilleries. The law also expanded the amount craft distilleries could produce annually by 50,000 gallons.
“We were basically fighting for our right to exist; and through sheer determination and work, we were able to get our bill passed,” Arthur said. “It was the first piece of [state] legislation since 1933 regarding distilled spirits.”
The Napa Valley Distillery was formed in 2009, three years before state regulations would loosen. Those years were “very emotional,” Arthur said, and the life he’d left was always looming in the background; Arthur had been in the insurance business in Fresno County.
“I hated what I was doing, but I was good at it,” Arthur recalled.
When one of his biggest clients, AIG, folded during the partial economic collapse in 2008 and 2009, his company folded. Around the same time, Arthur turned 40 and began to reevaluate his life.
“I decided right then that I was going to start doing something that I loved. I didn’t even know that we couldn’t do tasting rooms; I did almost no research, and we dove right in,” Arthur said. “For those first few years, I can’t tell you how many times I said to myself, ‘What did I do?’ But the alternative was, I had to go back and sell insurance.”
“My wife kept pushing and encouraging me; she had a lot to do with why we kept going,” he continued. “We just worked together as a team and made it work until the laws changed.”
Since the laws changed things have been great. They’re now open in two locations and started a bar club that has approximately 3,000 members across the state.
In late October, Arthur and Lusine are set to open The Hollywood Room, a restaurant and bar with a theme that’s a tip o’ the cap to the neighborhood where Arthur fell in love with “cocktail culture.”
“There will be a full restaurant and bar with cocktails, beer, and wine … our spirits and other spirits we love,” Arthur said. “We’ll be the first distillery in California to do this. We’re looking forward to it. It has been a dream of mine … I’m pursuing a passion; that’s really the best way to put it.”
The Hollywood Room will also have available “about 50 screenplays” for anyone who wants to thumb through them while they’re awaiting their meal or their “elevated cocktail experience,” Arthur said.
“Everything from Casablanca to Pulp Fiction,” he said. “It will be a tribute to the last 60 years of Hollywood.”
So, what does Napa’s cocktail geek recommend first-timers try?
“I’m a gin and tonic guy all the way,” Arthur said with a laugh. “Don’t get me wrong, I love each one; I’m an equal-opportunity drinker. But I love gin and tonic because each one is different.”
“I’m really enjoying spritzes right now,” he added. “Those low ABC cocktails with lots of flavor—those are easy to drink—they’re good with food, before food, or after food.”
The Napa Valley Distillery has two locations in Napa: The Tasting Salon and Bar Shop, located at the Oxbow Public Market at 601 1st Street, #8. Their Grand Tasting Salon and Event Center are located at 2485 Stockton Street, which will also be the home of the Hollywood Room.
The Stockton Street location is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays. It is closed on Wednesdays. The 1st Street location is open every day of the week, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sundays. For additional information, visit their website at napadistillery.com, or call them at (707) 265-6272. You can also follow them on Facebook by visiting and “liking” their page: facebook.com/NapaDistillery.
Nate Gartrell grew up in Benicia, studied journalism in college, and has written for a handful of media outlets since age 15. He aspires to visit all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums and to hit the trifecta at the horse track.
