A local craft distillery is hoping to create a community center that showcases Korean spirits and provides a platform for other businesses.
Ming Han Chung and James Kim make up the team behind Minhwa Spirits, which is featured in more than 15 Georgia restaurants and stores.
“We’ve always thought about certain ways we could make our work more meaningful in life,” Kim told What Now Atlanta. “We have families now. You start thinking about your legacy and that kind of stuff and what you can leave behind and things your children can grow into and be proud of. One of the things we talk about is a better representation of Asian culture. We landed on soju, the Korean spirit.”
Soju is a distilled grain-based alcoholic beverage with a long history in Korea.
To get started, they tapped into long-standing knowledge of the craft: Kim’s uncle made makgeolli, a rice wine, in a makeshift brewery connected to the family home off the coast of South Korea.
“I reached out to him and got the family recipe,” Kim said. “Ming and I went into the laboratory and experimented with it, did a bunch of research on it and thought, ‘This could be a thing.'”
They blended their knowledge of the craft and modern know-how to create their brand of soju, which now offers two products.
Minhwa Spirits uses only North Georgia mountain spring water, nuruk, yeast and rice – no artificial sweeteners, preservatives or additives.
“We wanted to build our company with an ethos of trying to take it back to the roots,” Kim said.
After a little over a year of operating out of a production-only distillery, Chung and Kim started thinking about how to take things a step further. The culmination of that desire: a tasting room in the works in Doraville.
They envision it to be a community center, hosting events, showcasing local artists, and serving as an incubator for other food and beverage concepts. They want to take it a step further than a traditional pop-up model, with all concepts operating under the roof acting as true partners in the success of the space.
“We want to make sure the bar program is top notch,” Chung said. “We didn’t want to spend time on parts of the business that stretch ourselves thin – food and having a cafe or a coffee place. We decided the model we wanted to go with is a full-on incubator model where we give them the best deal possible operating out of our space, as long as they are taking care of the space and doing a good job and growing their own business. We all succeed, and we all feed off each other’s success.”
One of the first local companies Minhwa Spirits will feature at the tasting room is Postern Coffee. Think coffee shop by day, bar by night.
Postern Coffee co-founder Josh Owh told What Now Atlanta that being a resident at the space will give them an economical way to operate.
“The hardest thing on our end is the initial costs,” Owh said. “A full-on brick-and-mortar, especially since we’re roasting as well, to have a cafe-roastery space is a large sum. Being a vendor/resident at Minhwa allows us to cut costs a lot and be part of something that’s collaborative.”
Ganji is slated to be another one of the first concepts at Minhwa Spirits. The concept from Jess Kim and Jun Park serves Korean-fusion cuisine and was a recent resident of the Punk Foodie @ Ponce pop-up incubator at Ponce City Market.
Hosting different concepts under the same roof allows opportunity for collaboration.
“We’ve already been talking with Josh and his team about his espresso and making cocktails with that, and with the food vendors, making sure our beverage program matches what their food menu’s gonna look like,” Kim said. “It will be labeled as a distillery with a tasting room, but we want people to come in and have this comfort of, you can come in, get some great coffee nonalcoholic drinks during the day, then have a nice dinner, a nice spirit.”
In addition to soju, they also plan to introduce a twist on traditional makgeolli.
They expect to open this year in late Q2 or early Q3. They’re excited about the opportunity to create an elevated but comfortable community space, as well as amplify the work of Asian-American entrepreneurs through the incubator element.
“Everyone’s firing on all cylinders,” Chung said.
