Steven Soderbergh’s life changed in June of 2007 while gearing up to begin filming Che in Madrid. The Bolivian-born casting director gave him a bottle of Singani 63 as a gift. He tried the spirit and instantly fell in love with it. He immediately wanted to know more about the unusual Bolivan spirit and how to get his hands on as much as possible.
The first 250 cases of Singani 63 landed in New Jersey in late 2012, early 2013. “We got our first hotel (The Dream Hotel) in January 2014,” says Soderbergh. “We are now available in about 100 accounts in New York and about twelve off-premise accounts.” They also have 45 accounts in Los Angeles and another 55 in San Francisco. “So, we are just in three cities right now.”
Soderbergh says that what makes it special is that there’s nothing else quite like it. “It’s new, but it’s 500 years old. It’s got this sort of trifecta of elements.” As someone who is interested in drinking and has now gotten interested in spirit business, he really looks at it now as a staple spirit. “If you’re somebody who entertains and you want to provide people with options and you have a rum and a vodka and a tequila and whisky, you should have this too.” He says that people compare it to a pisco. “It’s actually not. I would never drink a pisco straight. I really feel that it has got its own space with a lot of room around it.”
What does Singani 63 mean?
Photo: Matt Taylor-Gross
The 63 is for the year he was born. But, Soderbergh says that he’s been trying to get a plausible answer to what Singani means, but nobody has been able to give him a definitive answer. “The word itself is so old. I guess this is what they called it when they started distilling it,” he says. “It’s hard to tell if it was a word that came up because to somebody’s mind it tasted the way that word sounds.”
Just because he brought Singani 63 to the US and retired from feature film directing, that doesn’t mean that Soderbergh has stopped working behind the camera. He’s currently directing The Knick for Cinemax (The second season drops in October) and producing The Girlfriend Experience, Red Oaks and has multiple other projects on the horizon. “For the time being, I’m in TV land.”
His favorite part of film making is editing. “I do it just for fun when I’m sitting around. It’s endlessly fascinating and terrifying when you see how huge an effect can be achieved by just a minor change.” He likes wondering if he made all the right decisions.
Soderbergh likes to be involved in as many aspects of production as possible. “I started that way. When you’re making films as a kid you kind of have to do everything.” He feels like he came around and back to that style of film making. “The new technology that is exists now makes that possible.” Twenty-six years ago when he first started making features,
people would com up to him and say, “How do I break into the film business? How do I make a movie?” “I can just tell them that there’s no excuse now. You can go make a great looking movie for nothing. I just tell them, ‘Just go make something.’ The only aspect of film making that I haven’t been able to exert total control over is marketing.”
Photo: Cool Hunting
However, he is in charge of marketing for Singani 63. “It’s certainly an experiment to see whether or not the voice of the brand helps and works or not.” Because they don’t have as much of a budget as the big boys, they zig when the other spirits brands zag. “That’s what we’ve been trying to do.” If you look at any of the content they have created, it doesn’t look and feel like anything anyone else is doing. “It remains to be seen whether or not that will scale in working in three cities so far.”
At a certain point later this year, early next year, they will begin to figure out how to to expand into new markets. “I got a really good piece of advice from Simon Ford when I was at Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans.” He gave Soderbergh an hour and a half of his time to chat about the industry. He told him, “Here’s the biggest thing I’ve learned. Do not mistake expansion for growth.” He said, “You’re better off staying in three markets and continuing to penetrate and grow and keep those accounts happy than starting to think I should be in Seattle, I should be in Miami, I should be in Dallas, I should be in Chicago.” He said, “I made that mistake and it really set me back. Don’t do that.” Soderbergh knows that you didn’t really grow if your bottles are just sitting on a shelf covered in dust.
Soderbergh describes his website Extension765 as kind of a fun house. “It’s just kind of a depository for ideas that don’t have any other outlet.” Whether it’s the T-shirts or the re-cuts or the mash ups, it’s stuff that he generates that he doesn’t know where else to put. “Having just finished season two of The Knick, we are going to put the camera slates up for auction and that goes to charity.”
It’s a way for him to take things that he doesn’t want to throw in the trash that somebody who is a film buff might enjoy having. “I’ve got a new wave of stuff that about to go up. I’ve got some new shirts and a new re-cut of something.” He doesn’t want to say what he’s working on just yet. “We should wait. There’s always a chance I’ll look at it and decide I don’t want to put it out. That’s the upside of the internet. There’s lot of downsides.”
