Artisan Booze District lifts the spirits of Henderson

Compared to Las Vegas’ image as Sin City, Henderson’s would appear to be on the tame side. It’s a quintessential suburb with lots of churches, schools and parks and not much in the way of crime or vice. It’s quiet — maybe even boring, to some.

Those people, it would seem, haven’t heard about Henderson’s Artisan Booze District. Near U.S. Highway 95 and Warm Springs Road, it’s home to a winery, distillery and several breweries, all in one industrial complex. And you can tour all of them — or only some, if you want.

Jennifer Mahar, owner of Eventure Modern Event Specialists, said her tours of the district have been increasingly popular.

“People who have never experienced the behind-the-scenes of a brewery or a winery, they get to do it now,” Mahar said. “The tours allow them to experience all of them. You can see how spirits are made. The stories that the craftsmen talk about — how they brew — are amazing.”

Mahar has done “a ton” of private group tours, for anything from a wedding party to a group of more than 250 booked for next summer.

“One group isn’t drinking at all,” she said. “They just want to see the science of it.”

This week, she said, she has a group of 53 Germans coming in for an event at CraftHaus Brewery, complete with a band and “tons of fun stuff. It’s all customized.”

They also work with a chef, Scott Cummings, who won season 12 of “Hell’s Kitchen,” and works at one of Gordon Ramsay’s Las Vegas restaurants.

Public tours are available, too, from 1 to 3 p.m. most Saturdays, the exception being those that are blacked out because of, say, a busy time at the winery. (Call 844-787-0700.)

But people can tour the booze district on their own, too. For example, George Racz, owner of Las Vegas Distillery at 7330 Eastgate Road, Unit 100, offers tours at 11 a.m. and 1 and 3 p.m. weekdays and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays (www.lasvegasdistillery.com).

Racz is sort of the godfather of the booze district. The native of Hungary had emigrated to New York City and earned a bachelor’s degree in the art of filmmaking from Hunter College when he and his wife, Katalin, became interested in a small craft distillery in upstate New York. And there they saw their future.

They turned to Google — where would any of us be without Google? — to figure out states that didn’t already have craft distilleries. First up was Montana, which they decided was just too cold. Next up: Nevada.

“We just jumped,” Racz said. “We had never been here. We were very naive. We didn’t know what was waiting for us.”

They founded their company in 2008, while still living in New York. They didn’t know anything about the industry or how to distill, but they were about to learn.

In the process, Racz acquired a mentor of sorts in Charlie Peters, the since-deceased owner of Grape Expectations, the winery part of the booze district.

“He was my superhero,” Racz said. “He pioneered his industry also.”

Peters’ business model was and is private winemaking: People pay a certain amount and in return get the grapes and access to all production needs to make their own wine.

He had started his business in another location in Henderson in 2006, but before getting it off the ground, he had to formulate the legislation that would allow his style of winemaking to be legal in Nevada. Racz had to do the same thing for distilling, and, as in Peters’ case, it took five years.

Racz wrote the bill in 2009. It passed the Nevada Assembly but not the state senate in 2011. In 2013, Gov. Brian Sandoval signed it into law. And while Racz’s remains the only distillery in Southern Nevada, he said there now are five in the northern part of the state.

“It was a huge opportunity, to start the industry in Las Vegas,” he said. “It was a great honor.”

Racz made his first distillation in 2011, thanks to a loophole in the law and a letter of compliance from the state.

It was the first legal distillation in Nevada.

“Before that, there was a lot of not-so-legal distillation,” he said with a hearty laugh.

When Peters decided to expand, in 2012, Racz said he persuaded him to move near the distillery in the Harsch Henderson Commerce Center. Then the breweries started trickling in.

“Everybody realized that being together is an opportunity to be a destination,” Racz said. “My idea was that this is a community distillery. That’s how I got through five years. We needed the kind of camaraderie situation, because we never had enough money — never had enough anything.”

Wyndee Forrest, who founded and owns CraftHaus Brewery with her husband, Dave, also experienced a learning curve and a funding shortfall, and also ended up writing her own law.

The Forrests discovered craft beer during a trip to Europe in 2004, following their graduation from UNLV.

“The beer gods were singing,” she remembers of their epiphany in Amsterdam. “There was also the culture that went with it.”

But there wasn’t much craft beer in Las Vegas. They went back to Europe in 2007 and developed even more of an appreciation for it, but they still had to “mule” it to Las Vegas from Huntington Beach, Calif., Wyndee’s hometown.

Dave got into home brewing in 2009. In 2011, he learned that he was one of 10 people who were chosen from more than 3,000 entries to attend a beer-making camp at Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. in Chico, Calif. He came home impressed — and wanted to move to Chico.

Instead, they started doing legwork, research, attending conferences. A Kickstarter campaign surpassed their goal, and they had hit it off with Racz and the folks at Grape Expectations.

They decided to open a brewpub, but the license was $60,000 — which also covered poker machines.

“We wanted to have a sense of community,” Wyndee Forrest said, “with people talking to each other, not playing the machines.”

They appealed to the city, and ended up writing new licensing that removed the gaming component and lowered the fee to $10,000.

Except their zoning meant they couldn’t have a taproom, so it was back to the drawing board, again with the city of Henderson’s cooperation.

“I think they really wanted to see us succeed,” Forrest said.

They found brewers in a pair of Australians who had toured the United States to learn about craft brewing and wanted to stay.

“We knew we needed to hire professional brewers,” Forrest said, “for quality and consistency.”

They got construction help from her father, a contractor. And their taproom, at 7350 Eastgate Road, Unit 110, became reality in September. It’s open Wednesdays through Sundays, and often is the site of community events (www.crafthausbrewery.com). Plus, they often feature other brewers’ products.

Today, CraftHaus Brewery has 52 sales accounts across the valley, and are about to launch their first cans. They’re also working with chef Rick Moonen to produce an exclusive beer for his restaurants at Mandalay Bay.

Racz said the members of the booze district have adopted pieces of each other’s business models.

“The distillery was built on tours, winery private business, breweries on taprooms,” he said. Now, he’s offering private-whiskey-making and has a small bar area for tastings.

K.J. Howe, professor of yeastology at Grape Expectations, said they have adapted as well.

“We have a couple of things that were modified, mainly because of our own evolution,” he said. Tours now include tastings from their promotional wine, and they’ve added a blending room and have year-round production since they’re importing some grapes from Chile. Even the tours are collaborative, he said.

“We kind of all work together on this,” Howe said. Large groups may be broken into smaller ones, “one group will start here, one at the distillery.”

Contact reporter Heidi Knapp Rinella at Hrinella@reviewjournal.com. Find more of her stories at bestoflasvegas.com and follow @HKRinell on Twitter