How Mel Heim Bounced Into Whiskey
Mel Heim never dreamed of labor. If she’d had it her way, she’d have made a lengthy career out of jumping on her trampoline. But distilling whiskey ended up being a pretty solid fallback.
As co-founder and head of product of Big Nose Kate Whiskey, Mel’s role extends beyond distillation and blending and into management, product development, marketing, finance and investor relations. She’s running the business alongside her cofounders, Kevin Burke and Paul Earl – and partnering with impressive industry names, like Caley Shoemaker.
Under Mel’s guidance, the distillery crafted a whiskey so good that it even drew the attention of celebrity partners, such as husband-and-wife team Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone. Definitely an impressive accomplishment – even if it fails in comparison to bouncing all day long.
It just took a while for Mel to accept the job.
From The Jump
After coming to the conclusion that trampolining wouldn’t pay the bills in a capitalist society, Mel half-heartedly chose a path: studying English in college. Her interest in reading and writing made it seem like a good option.
But it wasn’t enough to keep her attention and the college experience wasn’t the right fit for Mel.
“I didn't really care for college as a structure so I dropped out,” Mel explained. “And I was aimless as ever and just did random jobs for as long as I felt like until I was bored.”
Soon Mel stumbled on a job at Rogue Ales & Spirits, a brewery based in Newport, Oregon. She did data entry in a loft above the brewery’s Portland outpost – the same location that hosted Rogue’s burgeoning distillery.
“My skillset was very limited,” Mel recalled. “They were not fulfilling any roles for rollerblading or trampolines or anything cool like that. So doing data entry – did that for a little bit. It was really, really boring.”
To avoid the tedious grind of entering data into spreadsheets, Mel occasionally wandered over to the distillery. She found a friend in the distiller and asked him everything about the distillation process, learning to craft spirits over time. And she learned something about herself too.
“He told me something that I didn't know about myself,” Mel admits. “That was that I had a good nose. I also didn't know that that was a skillset and something that could eventually pay the bills.”
The trips to the distillery continued until the distiller announced he was leaving to go to law school. Mel’s first thought was about who would take over: “I hope the new distiller lets me come up here and smell stuff.”
However, the exiting distiller wanted Mel to be the new distiller. When he first offered her the job, she turned it down. In fact, she said no three times.
“I had created my own stories in my head that I just wasn't good at science,” Mel confessed. “He said that he would just teach me everything he knew.”
The fourth time he asked, Mel finally accepted and started training. “On my first day, I was like, ‘All right, which one of these things that I'm looking at is the still?’ I really didn't even understand the equipment or what we were looking at.”
Taking a Leap
After learning everything she could crafting spirits for Rogue, Mel moved on to another Portland-based distillery, overseeing production, operations and expansions for eight and a half years (long enough to help take the company public) – until the Pandemic hit. And unfortunately, her role was eliminated.
“I was like, ‘oh, cool, I have a new baby and a global pandemic and no job,’” Mel recollected. “Let's just turn the difficulty up to 11.”
Mel considered leaving the spirits industry and pursuing a different career. She spent seven weeks with her baby and family trying to shrug off the stress of not having a job. But then, something fell in her lap.
“I basically was sent a deck in my email,” Mel said. “It came from Becky Harris at Catoctin Creek [Distilling Co.], who's a board member of the American Craft Spirits Association. She said, ‘I've had this but I couldn't think of anyone who would be up for the challenge; seeing as you are now happily unemployed, take a look. You should contact them if you're interested.”
The deck was the concept behind Big Nose Kate Whiskey. It introduced Mel to Catherine Elder, the inspiration for the whiskey concept.
“Here's this person who has this amazing story and she's sort of an unsung character, a real person who history forgot,” Mel noted. “And I was like, ‘That's my kind of people.’ I like the misfits.”
Soon Mel was on a Zoom call with her fellow founders talking about what a Big Nose Kate whiskey would look and taste like.
The whiskey Mel produces with the team at Big Nose Kate was developed in her kitchen during the peak of the pandemic.
Hopping Along
These days, she works remotely from her home in Portland and commutes to the distillery in Santa Fe, New Mexico every four weeks. While she’s there, she batch blends the product and does sensory work with the team. When she’s not there, she keeps the business running with all the unsexy parts of operating a distillery.
Part of her job involves investor relations. Mel works to bring investors on board who understand the vision and believe in the product on a higher level – dreamers who can get behind the brand. She and her team put in the time and effort to get backing from some of the most sophisticated venture capitalists in the spirits space. They also gained two incredible partners in Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone.
The pair joined the venture early but Big Nose Kate Whiskey decided not to promote it until the brand was more established.
“We personally needed to get through our proof of concept phase,” Mel explained. “We needed to know that this product was worth making and would be well received.”
So Melissa and Ben acted as silent partners for almost a year. As Mel tells it, she had them in her corner, sure, writing checks, but also dreaming of the future alongside them.
Flipping the Script
With a little help from investors, Mel and team have been able to develop a product that is an amazing example of American whiskey but also something that was accessible to all drinkers. One way they did this was by setting a reasonable price point.
“No one on my team wanted this to be an exclusive product,” Mel confessed.
In many ways, the effort to make whiskey more available to a wider and more diverse audience is a nod to Big Nose Kate herself. Kate was a leader in a male-dominated society and her story never got told. So, by creating a high-quality whiskey for everyone, regardless of gender identity, financial status or race, Mel’s team is opening up the world of whiskey to a bigger audience.
Having been in the industry for 15 years, Mel saw the industry evolve. Lucky enough for her, she kicked off her career in Portland, which was a mecca for craft beverage, including beer and spirits. It made for a very collaborative community. But, when she began, women weren’t present at all in leadership roles. It made things challenging.
“In this industry, I've run into as many problems being a woman as I do being left-handed,” She acknowledged. “Some things just don't work. They weren't built for me.”
Representation in the industry has vastly improved since Mel first began. In fact, back in 2009, she founded the first collective of female distillers, The Clear Boots Society, which grew from two to ten members in three years. Fifteen years later, she still sees a lot of room for progress. And the way forward is for everyone to lend a hand.
“The women groups and underrepresented groups can only do so much,” she insisted. “We need allyship.”
Mel continues, explaining that the industry needs to want to diversify and welcome – and support – new faces to the fold. Otherwise, progress can only go so far. That said, she praised the American Craft Spirits Association’s Step Up program along with groups, like Ladies of American Distilling, the Women’s Distillery Guild and Women of the Vine & Spirits for creating spaces for people like her.
Meanwhile, Mel wants to be remembered as a distiller who helped her fellow colleagues reach their full potential.
“I operated in a silo for years and years without access to the broader community of craftspeople,” Mel said. Looking back at her early days at Rogue with a distiller who mentored her, she added, “The significance of my mentor teaching me in a way that made me interested – without judging my shortfalls – is best described as life-changing.”
So Mel aims to pass that experience on to distillers, blenders and craft spirits professionals of the future. After all, if she can’t be remembered for the high jumps she did on her trampoline, that’s certainly a good alternative.
