BEFORE AND AFTER: CARDINAL SPIRITS BUILDING

On our 9th anniversary, we wanted to take a minute to go back to the very beginning. 

This is our home: 922 S. Morton St., a mile south of downtown Bloomington. It's just out of the way enough that when you find it, tucked in to our otherwise industrial and residential neighborhood, it feels a bit like you're discovering something. It's exciting. It's a nice home, don't you think?

BUT — do you remember what our building looked like before it was home to Cardinal Spirits?

It looked like this:

And on the inside? 

Before:

 OOF!

And after: 

Sometimes we feel like an HGTV crew should have been following us around in 2014 as we tore this building apart and put it back together.

People always want to know what our building used to be. It was a sheet-metal shop, from 1960 through the early 2000s. Then, until 7-ish years ago, it was church offices and storage facility for faith-based mission. Hence the mattresses and such.

We had a lot of work to do to turn the building into a distillery and cocktail bar. First, we punched some holes in the walls.

Then, we ripped down some walls.

Then, we ripped up the floor because at this point we were in the habit of ripping things up, and also we had to make way for plumbing. 

You definitely want a sociology major in charge of your plumbing. That's Cardinal co-founder, Jeff. 

Next: Windows. Doors. Limestone bar. These are a few of our favorite things. 

And then we thought, hey, here's an idea: why not paint the whole thing black?

Let's make a sidewalk. And, put Cardinal co-founder Adam in charge of grouting the bathrooms/making a horror movie.

One day, ginormous pieces of distilling equipment started arriving, and that continued pretty much every day until we opened. This is the boiler, made in Indiana:

The still arrived, and we started making spirits. 

Once you make spirits, you have to put them in bottles. This was our first run:

Meanwhile, in the cocktail bar, stools, tables and shelves found their places. 

Yes, eagle-eyed reader, that's a diaper bag on the left. Co-founders Adam and Jeff both had newborn boys at the time. 

Cardinal server Alyvia chalked away.

The staff learned their way around the bar:

And then we thought everything looked pri-tay, pri-tay, pritay good, we said, OK, let's do this. Doors opened, and goods and services were exchanged for U.S. dollars. SEVEN years ago!

We said "we" a lot here. By "we," we mostly mean these people, the contractors that made Cardinal Spirits possible: Howard's Home Improvement / HFI  / Bloomington HVAC / Riverway Plumbing / Clutch Fabrication / Matte Black Architecture / Central Arizona Supply / B-Tech

It's fun to look back on how far we've come. When we opened in February 2015, we distilled exactly one spirit: Vodka. And our bar served exactly one spirit in cocktails: Vodka. Sure, gin and rum and liqueurs were close behind, but we were blown away by how supportive and jazzed you all were from the start!

We've made dozens of spirits since then, most of which have won awards and medals and high ratings, appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, poured into cocktails at the two-Michelin-starred Restaurant Daniel in NYC. We're now distributing in 12 states and D.C.

In pre-pandemic times, we opened our production area to tours every weekend...

Our tasting room grew into a full bar, and in year 3, we added a kitchen so that we could serve dinner and brunch on the weekends. During the pandemic, we were carry-out only for 16 looooong months, and we’ll always be grateful for your support during that wild time. We’ve since re-opened for dine-in.

Cheers to another 9, and even more!