Rocket Vodka Launches the Rocket AI Bartender™, The World's First AI Bartender for the Après Spirit®

Rocket Vodka, the leading California vodka handcrafted from 100% apples, announces the launch of Rocket AI, an innovative AI-powered bartender designed to elevate the vodka experience for enthusiasts and connoisseurs alike.

SILICON VALLEY, Calif., May 22, 2025 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Rocket Vodka, the leading California vodka handcrafted from 100% apples, announces the launch of Rocket AI, an innovative AI-powered bartender designed to elevate the vodka experience for enthusiasts and connoisseurs alike.

Whether you're seeking the perfect après-sport cocktail, exploring the brand's unique apple-based heritage, or locating the nearest launchpad serving Rocket Vodka, Rocket AI is your go-to digital mixologist and expert concierge ready to answer your questions about how to elevate your spirit with Rocket Vodka.

Rocket AI gives you:

• Expert Knowledge: Dive deep into Rocket Vodka's handcrafted distillation process, learn about the specific apple varieties used, and understand what sets this vodka apart in a crowded market.

• Personalized Recommendations: Receive tailored cocktail suggestions suited to your mood, occasion, activity, or available ingredients and mixers, embodying the versatile spirit of celebration and achievement.

• Curated Launchpad Locations: Discover bars and restaurants that serve Rocket Vodka, ensuring you always know where to enjoy your favorite spirit.

• Investor and Retailer Insights: Access information on partnership opportunities, reflecting Rocket Vodka's commitment to growth and community engagement.

• and so much more!

'Rocket AI advances our mission to elevate your spirit and celebrate life's peak moments,' said Dariusz Paczuski, founder of Rocket Vodka. 'By merging our focus on tradition, and innovative cutting-edge AI technology, we're offering our community an unparalleled experience that honors our roots while looking to the future.'

Rocket Vodka has garnered acclaim for its quality and innovation, earning features in the Wine Enthusiast Buying Guide with 93 points and Punch Magazine Liquid Courage – and accolades such as the Gold Medal at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition and 'Best in Show Vodka' at the L.A. Spirits Awards.

The introduction of Rocket AI marks another milestone in the brand's journey to redefine and elevate the vodka experience. Built by Albers Advisory on the OpenAI Developer Platform, Rocket AI offers users an interactive and personalized journey into the world of Rocket Vodka.

Give Rocket AI a Shot

Meet Rocket AI at rocketvodka.com/rocket-ai-bartender and click the bartender icon. Whether you're a long-time fan or new to the brand, Rocket AI is here to elevate your spirit with Rocket Vodka.

About Rocket Vodka

Founded in Menlo Park, California, Rocket Vodka is the leading California vodka handcrafted from 100% apples, distilled in the Polish tradition. Rocket Vodka is naturally gluten-free, with no sugar added. The mission of Rocket Vodka is to elevate your spirits. As the official Après Spirit®, Rocket Vodka celebrates good life, good times, and peak moments with friends and family.

Rocket Vodka is available for purchase online and at select retailers across the United States. For more information, visit www.rocketvodka.com. To order now, visit https://www.rocketvodka.com/buy-rocket-vodka.

Media Contact

Dariusz Paczuski, Rocket Vodka, 1 6505564069, dariusz@rocketvodka.com, www.rocketvodka.com/rocket-ai

Rocket Vodka receives "Excellent - Highly Recommended" from Wine Enthusiast!

Rocket Vodka receives a 93 rating from Wine Enthusiast - considered “Excellent - Highly Recommend” per their rating guide.

Distilled from apples, this vodka has a mildly fruity aroma that suggests cherry blossoms. The palate is lightly sweet, with a hint of lemon peel astringency and gently floral exhale. — Kara Newman 

See more at Wine Enthusiast

Liquid Courage

Words by JOHANNA HARLOW | photography by PAULETTE PHLIPOT

It all started on a ski lift. “It was a perfect powder day,” recalls Dariusz Paczuski. Perched above this pristine world of white, the evergreens far below his dangling skis, the air crisp and sharp, Dariusz started daydreaming. “Okay, what can I do to make it possible to do this more often with my friends and family?’” he recalls thinking. An answer popped into his head: Start your own business. But what kind? A vodka business perhaps? “I’ll ski in the morning on the fresh snow, and then I’ll pitch my vodka in the afternoon to all the restaurants and bars and resorts,” the Polish immigrant and Menlo Park resident decided. Thus Rocket Vodka began.

But breaking into the beverage industry wasn’t easy. “There are so many vodkas out there that are not adding any value to the world or community because they’re just the same as everyone else,” Dariusz explains. To set himself apart, he went beyond common base ingredients like rye, wheat, corn and potatoes to experiment with something a little uncommon: apples. The choice paid homage to the backyard apple trees of his childhood home, which his father used for making moonshine. As a bonus, Dariusz also got to stick it to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had banned Polish apple imports at the time.

Dariusz says that, while growing up, most farms made alcohol from their excess crops. “When I was growing up, vodka wasn’t consumed in cocktails,” he shares. “We were sipping the vodka with salty, pickled, fatty, smoky foods, as a complement to that. So it was more like a food pairing.”

As Dariusz explored his business idea, he decided to make use of a trip to visit his mother in Warsaw. “[I wanted] to find some crusty old Polish dude making some amazing vodka that I could basically import,” he recalls, “change his life and mine … I call it my vodka quest.” Sadly, this vodka virtuoso never material ized. “I joke now that I think I’m turning into that crusty old Polish dude,” Dariusz chuckles.

Back in the Bay, Dariusz sought someone to show him the ropes. He found Roman Polonsky, a Russian engineer at Google who made vodka at home. “The first experiment was in my garage,” Dariusz shares. After stocking up on a variety of apples from the Menlo Park Farmers Market, Roman and Dariusz cleaned, cored and mashed the apples before dumping them into Home Depot buckets and adding yeast and water. The water needed to be, as his mentor put it, “the temperature of a cow’s teat.” “It was a Russian requirement,” Dariusz laughs. They also experimented with different alcohol levels, or proof percentages. “Fifty percent was all burn and no taste, no character,” Dariusz describes. “At 40 percent, you get the heat without the grimace. You feel the heat as it goes down, but you still get the taste.”

From there, Dariusz formed a partnership with Dry Diggings Distillery near Apple Hill, a company that had already experimented with grape-based vodka and apple brandy. Together they settled on a blend of Granny Smith, Golden Delicious and Fuji apples. “It’s got a hint of apple on the nose and a subtle sweetness on the palate,” Dariusz describes. “The mouthfeel is a little different than a vodka from potatoes or grain.” His careful consideration paid off, netting Rocket Vodka a gold medal in the San Francisco World Spirits Competition two years running, as well as “Best in Show Vodka” at the L.A. Spirits Awards.

That’s not all that sets Rocket apart. It comes down to heads, hearts and tails. The spirit that first flows from the distiller, called the head, contains toxic ethanol compounds—“If you drink that straight, it’ll kill you,” Dariusz notes. Some companies redistill it rather than throw it out, but the drawback is that the vodka “becomes very, very neutral.” Tails, at the end of the distillation process, can also be dumped or redistilled. The distiller’s art is knowing how to find the “heart” in the middle of the run. “We cut heads and tails really aggressively to create a pure heart,” Dariusz says. A fitting phrase, since every step of Rocket Vodka’s evolution has been a labor of love.

“We bootstrapped everything,” Dariusz says. With no sales team, he leveraged experience from his day job as a chief marketing officer and recruited a handful of passionate volunteers to talk to restaurants, bars and hotels. “None of us had any alcohol experience,” Dariusz grins, “except for drinking it.”

Soon, Rocket Vodka had found its way into notable Peninsula eateries like Zola, Ettan, Terùn, Flea Street Cafe, Vina Enoteca and Camper, plus Draeger’s markets and K&L Wine Merchants. Dariusz explains that these are all “cool mom-and-pop places that truly care about the customer experience,” and are always on the lookout for what’s local and unique. “Our vodka performs really well at places like that.” Now don’t get him wrong, “I would love to be in Applebee’s someday,” he says. “But it’s in places like Zola and Flea Street that people discover new spirits and new foods.”

Dariusz has come quite a ways since his dream on a ski lift. Wondering where his business gets its name? It’s a sly nod to its origin story. On the slopes, Dariusz’s friends call him the Polish Rocket. “I like to ski fast and go straight downhill,” he laughs. But the Rocket Vodka moniker is more than that. “I chose it ultimately because I wanted the brand to stand for elevation and aspiration,” he says. “We want to celebrate you and your peak moments.”

Dariusz donates a portion of the proceeds from each bottle of Rocket Vodka to World Central Kitchen, an international humanitarian organization that organizes meal distribution sites in crisis spots. WCK has supported Ukrainian refugees who fled to Poland after Russia’s invasion.

Join our Launch Crew – Brand Experience Creative Internship

Join the Mission.

Our mission is to elevate your spirit. We're looking for adventurous, active, and ambitious people to join our crew, launch our brand, grow our business, and celebrate peak moments. Elevate your spirit!

A little about us.

Rocket Vodka is the leading California vodka handcrafted from 100% apples, distilled in the Polish tradition. The mission of Rocket Vodka is to elevate your spirits. As the official Après Spirit®, Rocket Vodka celebrates good life, good times, and peak moments with friends and family. 

A lot about you.

You get people. You understand and connect with people. You love to listen to and learn from people. You create and thrive on positive and productive relationships. You empathize with people. You elevate other people through positive and productive partnerships.

You get creative. You are a customer-obsessed, people-focused, and design-thinking creative with a passion for creating provocative, original concepts and content against a strategy. You have a deep understanding of storytelling and the writing craft to provide clear creative direction.

You get collaboration. It is critical that you come up with breakthrough ideas of your own, but you will also be called on to collaborate with others. You will balance working with our sales, marketing, product, analytics teams to help create breakthrough and elevated work.

You get growth. You love to listen and learn. You aspire to do more with your life. You have big ambitions. You have a growth mindset. You are agile, adapt to, and even seek out new situations, scenarios, and responsibilities. 

You get social. You are fluent in Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. You are a curator and creator with a sharp eye for content, photos, videos, and moments that make people click and stick, tap and follow. You know how to build audiences and engage them. 

You get it done. You follow through and get things done. You have integrity and grit. You work hard without burning out. You are organized and pay attention to details. You are independent and thrive on autonomy. You have your act together.

Your peak moments. What we’ll do for you.

Career. Dream it. Do it. Achieve it. Build your resume and learn on the job. You’ll have lots of autonomy and opportunities to build bullets for your resume and LinkedIn profile.

Coaching. We’ll share what we’ve learned and best practices in leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, and operations. We thrive on learning.

Collaboration. We’ll work together as a team to build our people, build our culture, build our community, build our brand, and build our business. #oneteam #onedream

Our peak moments. What you’ll do for us. 

Your brief, in priority order:

We’re building a new creative content Brand Experiences program that will be responsible for a broad range of creative, design, brand, content, and marketing initiatives. Inspired by Red Bull and Liquid Death, this program will deliver creative, content, community, and communications that click and stick.

You have to love to create, with everything that entails: creative, content, community, and comms, creating tribes. Concepting, iterating, reformulating, taking risks. Designing, crafting, presenting. Revising, recombining, fine-tuning. You have to love it all, because we thrive on creative energy.

Our Brand Experiences program requires knowing our customers by heart – and the products they depend on, building and maintaining strong relationships with numerous teams, keeping an eye on cultural contexts for every campaign we build, and understanding the ins and outs of our business.

Our vision for the Brand Experiences program is to create a creative content, community, and communications center of excellence, delivering benchmark-beating, goal-crushing, and award-winning creative that amplifies the brand and accelerates business growth.

Your inspiration:

1. Who/lifestyle: we celebrate you and your peak moments … spotlight on swimming, biking, running, skiing, snowboarding, hiking, etc. … and the people who do it

2. What/product: California vodka from 100% apples that pairs perfectly in mouthwatering cocktails … spotlight on cocktails/recipes, food pairings … and the people (and places) who serve it (mixologists/bartenders)

3. Where/ingredients: handcrafted in California from 100% apples … spotlight on delicious apples, fresh water, cool mountains, stunning geography, Northern California … and the people (and partners) who make it

4. When/après/cocktails: #alwaysaprès with friends and families … spotlight on people enjoying our launchpads, bars, food/restaurants, après sport, etc. … and the people who enjoy it

5. Why: elevate your spirit, charities

Your deliverables, in priority order:

1. Conduct competitive intelligence and their brand experience (top 5-10 vodkas)

2. Suggest an approach, style-guide, media and brand experience (website & social)

3. Update/create assets (website, social)

4. Create new animations (social, website)

5. Record audio logo (social, website)

6. Create launchpads playlists

7. Provide style-guide and editable assets for future use (social, website)

8. Draft creative campaign

You Have

• Passion for elevated, breakthrough creative content to fuel world-class, omni-media campaigns

• Understanding of 360-degree, full-spectrum media, including traditional, video, digital, social

• Experience with interdisciplinary creative, editorial, marketing, media, and production teams

• A growth mindset, positive attitude, and demonstrated hunger for continuous learning

• Ability to drive cross-functional collaboration and consensus without clear authority

• The diplomatic savvy to build positive and productive partnerships inside and out

• A track record of proactively establishing and following through on commitments

• Excellent interpersonal, organizational, creative, and communications skills

• A strong work ethic and strong core values (honesty, integrity, creativity)

• Problem-solving skills, constantly thinking about ways to improve

• Passion for technology and cool products

• High taste level. Culturally aware.

• Low ego. Good person.

ROCKET VODKA @ LEVI’S GRANFONDO

We're heading back to Windsor CA on 4/11-13 to sponsor Levi's Granfondo. Join us for epic rides and après cocktails! Early birds ride free with launch code RocketVLGF24$ and everyone else gets discounts with RocketVodkaLGF2024. Please feel free to share these codes with your cycling friends.

Elevate your competitive spirit and experience Sonoma County's world-class roads and wine region at their best. This event is the brainchild of professional road cyclist Levi Leipheimer and rivals some of the toughest stages of the world's most difficult road races. There's nothing else like it. Hope to see you there!

HONORING OUR PATRON. CELEBRATING OUR ANNIVERSARY.

Our mission is to elevate your spirits and celebrate peak moments. Today we’re celebrating our own peak moments, honoring our patron on the date of his passing, my father Wojciech Paczuski, and celebrating our launch anniversary.

Today we’re also launching Project Appleseed to fuel our next stage of growth. We’re seeking angel investors to join our mission, to continue his legacy, and take a bite of the large ($40B) and growing ($68B by 2030) vodka market. Please contact me here to learn more.