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.