Making vodka is a family affair for Gary Shokin and his daughters Kary Laskin (left) and Samantha Shokin (right).
One day in 2009 Gary Shokin and his daughter Kary Laskin were driving down the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn when Gary blurted out, “We should make vodka.”
“ Oh, ” thought Kary. “ My dad’s having another idea. ”
But this time, they quickly realized that the idea was right. They had to make vodka — and make it in Brooklyn. Gary and many of his family members’ had immigrated to Brooklyn from Lithuania, and Kary was born there. They had roots in Kings County. The whole family lives in the borough.
“But Gary,” I asked, “why vodka?”
“It’s the number one drink in Eastern Europe,” Gary said. “So that’s what we were drinking and it’s the one product we knew very well. For many years I was collecting vodkas from different countries. I had a huge collection, maybe three or four hundred bottles from all over the world. I thought America was missing a really good vodka. Everybody was drinking European vodka, Russian or Polish or French. So I thought, ‘Why not American vodka?’”