The story of Coalition Whiskey starts like many others — a guy with a dream starts a whiskey brand — except that it doesn’t. Leonid Yangarber’s story starts in Russia, actually the Soviet Union before there was Russia, and he, as the son of two civil engineers in Moscow, was supposed to engineer bridges and tunnels. Soon after he graduated the Soviet Union collapsed and the economy opened up to outside goods, which opened a new career path for Yangarber when he joined a tiny startup that represented Martini & Rossi Vermouth in the country. Since then he has held a number of jobs in the liquor industry, one of which brought him to America and face-to-face with American whiskey.
A Chance Opportunity
But before he made it to America, Yangarber had the opportunity to work for Allied Domecq, which, among many other brands, owned Ballentine’s, one of the top selling whiskey brands in the world at the time. He covered markets all over Europe for the company before Allied Domecq was sold to Pernod-Ricard and Yangarber went to work for Russian Standard Vodka in Moscow.
At that time, Russian Standard Vodka was a wildly popular brand in the domestic market and was also getting requests from companies in other countries for export rights. Because of his extensive knowledge of foreign markets, Yangarber was the perfect person to open new markets for the brand in other countries. For three years he was responsible for the entire world market except for the United States, which had not figured into the brand’s global expansion plans yet. Then he was tapped to open the American market via Miami and a year later he was charged with opening the Canadian market to Russian Standard Vodka.
For twelve years he learned the ins and outs of the American liquor market, which is unlike anything else in the global economy.
“The US liquor market is way different from any, particularly the European ones,” Yangarber says. “There is not a single common denominator, nothing. Everyone thinks it is one country, but when you start selling liquor here really it is 50. The complexity of the market was my number one surprise. The speed of the three-tier system is also very slow, and things take a long time here. It’s not that Europe is a fast place, but it’s one tier, maybe a tier and a half compared to here.”
Choosing Destiny
Almost two years ago Yangarber officially started Coalition Whiskey, but the process of getting the brand started began more than four years ago as he navigated the complex system and honed his vision after realizing he wanted to build something for himself instead of for someone else.
“The vodka market had become an extremely difficult place to be unless your name is Tito’s,” Yangarber recounts. “It became a price game and it was so little fun as things became increasingly commodified. When the whiskey resurgence started, you started to increasingly see the bar go brown and then more brown and then more brown, until the point where there were almost no clear spirits. Ten or fifteen years ago it was all clear, it was all vodka and very little brown. Now the only thing you see at a bar is all brown with a little bit of tequila.”
His drive to build something on his own and build his own success story built upon the knowledge he had amassed of the international spirits market as well as his knowledge of the American spirits market throughout his career. He saw the writing on the wall as clear spirits began to wane in popularity, but his foray into brown water was not instant by any means.
“I was choosing between tequila and whiskey, which were both doing the best in the market,” he says. “Tequila is an easier, faster business, but somehow I didn’t feel the connection. I aspired to do a whiskey because it is so American. What is more American than American whiskey? I wanted to do something very American, so it was not a tough choice to make. And I wanted to do it in Kentucky, a premium brand with premium pricing, and the only way to support that would be Kentucky liquid, specifically Bourbon.”
Southern Hospitality
He started looking for contacts in Kentucky, and on an intelligence-gathering trip to Kentucky Yangarber met with Corky Taylor at Kentucky Peerless Distillery, who suggested Stephen Thompson at Kentucky Artisan Distillery. Within minutes he was headed to Crestwood, Kentucky to meet Thompson at his distillery to discuss his plans.
Thompson ran through the options for sourcing Kentucky Bourbon, including contract distilling, and all of the difficulties that went along with that process. When Yangarber asked for his advice on what to do next, Thompson advised him to stay out of the business altogether because he would lose money as it is so hard to come up with something new and high quality on the market.
Throughout that trip everyone he met with had the same story — it’s too hard to get a quality product that you can share the origins of at a price you can afford and building a brand is too difficult, so why don’t you go to Tennessee or Indiana for something more in your price range.
He spoke with several consultants and brokers and continued to work on his business plan, trying to make sense along the way of how 10-year-old Kentucky Bourbon could cost $30 a bottle or $300 a bottle and where his brand would fit into that equation. He flew to Kentucky several more times and met with more consultants and more brands before finally receiving a call from Stephen Thompson that would change the course of his brand-building journey.
“He said listen, I have this rye that is four years plus, and it’s a local estate-grown rye whiskey from the farm next door and it’s very unique, are you interested? So we tried it and I liked it. I was very surprised. I knew nothing about rye whiskey. So I went back to my research and realized that’s probably not a bad place to be.”
It’s a smaller, more dynamic, and more rapidly growing market, he would realize. He began researching wine barrel Finish: es and realized he could have something quite unique.
He bought his first 120 barrels of the estate-grown rye distilled at Kentucky Artisan and got to work on the brand name, the branding, the bottle design, and everything else that had to be decided before he could get his product on the market.
“I think it’s a pretty unique whiskey offering, maybe not for the beginners,” Yangarber says. “It’s geared more toward the advanced whiskey aficionado because of the unique pedigree and the character. It has taken a lot of care. It’s very honest whiskey.”
You can currently find Coalition whiskey in Kentucky at Liquor Barn, in New York, New Jersey, Tennessee, Maryland, Washington DC, Texas, Washington state, Indiana, and soon in Illinois, Georgia, and California.
Leonid Yangarber portraits in Irvington Ny, Nov. 24, 2020 Photographer: Tiffany Hagler-Geard www.Portraitsbytiff.com www.tiffanyhaglergeard.com
A Chance Opportunity
But before he made it to America, Yangarber had the opportunity to work for Allied Domecq, which, among many other brands, owned Ballentine’s, one of the top selling whiskey brands in the world at the time. He covered markets all over Europe for the company before Allied Domecq was sold to Pernod-Ricard and Yangarber went to work for Russian Standard Vodka in Moscow.
At that time, Russian Standard Vodka was a wildly popular brand in the domestic market and was also getting requests from companies in other countries for export rights. Because of his extensive knowledge of foreign markets, Yangarber was the perfect person to open new markets for the brand in other countries. For three years he was responsible for the entire world market except for the United States, which had not figured into the brand’s global expansion plans yet. Then he was tapped to open the American market via Miami and a year later he was charged with opening the Canadian market to Russian Standard Vodka.
For twelve years he learned the ins and outs of the American liquor market, which is unlike anything else in the global economy.
“The US liquor market is way different from any, particularly the European ones,” Yangarber says. “There is not a single common denominator, nothing. Everyone thinks it is one country, but when you start selling liquor here really it is 50. The complexity of the market was my number one surprise. The speed of the three-tier system is also very slow, and things take a long time here. It’s not that Europe is a fast place, but it’s one tier, maybe a tier and a half compared to here.”
Choosing Destiny
Almost two years ago Yangarber officially started Coalition Whiskey, but the process of getting the brand started began more than four years ago as he navigated the complex system and honed his vision after realizing he wanted to build something for himself instead of for someone else.
“The vodka market had become an extremely difficult place to be unless your name is Tito’s,” Yangarber recounts. “It became a price game and it was so little fun as things became increasingly commodified. When the whiskey resurgence started, you started to increasingly see the bar go brown and then more brown and then more brown, until the point where there were almost no clear spirits. Ten or fifteen years ago it was all clear, it was all vodka and very little brown. Now the only thing you see at a bar is all brown with a little bit of tequila.”
His drive to build something on his own and build his own success story built upon the knowledge he had amassed of the international spirits market as well as his knowledge of the American spirits market throughout his career. He saw the writing on the wall as clear spirits began to wane in popularity, but his foray into brown water was not instant by any means.
“I was choosing between tequila and whiskey, which were both doing the best in the market,” he says. “Tequila is an easier, faster business, but somehow I didn’t feel the connection. I aspired to do a whiskey because it is so American. What is more American than American whiskey? I wanted to do something very American, so it was not a tough choice to make. And I wanted to do it in Kentucky, a premium brand with premium pricing, and the only way to support that would be Kentucky liquid, specifically Bourbon.”
Southern Hospitality
He started looking for contacts in Kentucky, and on an intelligence-gathering trip to Kentucky Yangarber met with Corky Taylor at Kentucky Peerless Distillery, who suggested Stephen Thompson at Kentucky Artisan Distillery. Within minutes he was headed to Crestwood, Kentucky to meet Thompson at his distillery to discuss his plans.
Thompson ran through the options for sourcing Kentucky Bourbon, including contract distilling, and all of the difficulties that went along with that process. When Yangarber asked for his advice on what to do next, Thompson advised him to stay out of the business altogether because he would lose money as it is so hard to come up with something new and high quality on the market.
Throughout that trip everyone he met with had the same story — it’s too hard to get a quality product that you can share the origins of at a price you can afford and building a brand is too difficult, so why don’t you go to Tennessee or Indiana for something more in your price range.
He spoke with several consultants and brokers and continued to work on his business plan, trying to make sense along the way of how 10-year-old Kentucky Bourbon could cost $30 a bottle or $300 a bottle and where his brand would fit into that equation. He flew to Kentucky several more times and met with more consultants and more brands before finally receiving a call from Stephen Thompson that would change the course of his brand-building journey.
“He said listen, I have this rye that is four years plus, and it’s a local estate-grown rye whiskey from the farm next door and it’s very unique, are you interested? So we tried it and I liked it. I was very surprised. I knew nothing about rye whiskey. So I went back to my research and realized that’s probably not a bad place to be.”
It’s a smaller, more dynamic, and more rapidly growing market, he would realize. He began researching wine barrel Finish: es and realized he could have something quite unique.
He bought his first 120 barrels of the estate-grown rye distilled at Kentucky Artisan and got to work on the brand name, the branding, the bottle design, and everything else that had to be decided before he could get his product on the market.
“I think it’s a pretty unique whiskey offering, maybe not for the beginners,” Yangarber says. “It’s geared more toward the advanced whiskey aficionado because of the unique pedigree and the character. It has taken a lot of care. It’s very honest whiskey.”
You can currently find Coalition whiskey in Kentucky at Liquor Barn, in New York, New Jersey, Tennessee, Maryland, Washington DC, Texas, Washington state, Indiana, and soon in Illinois, Georgia, and California.
