Orienting New Customers to the American Spirit

Despite the sobering effects of the U.S. trade imbalance with Japan, there’s at least one Orange County company that is feeling no pain. For that matter, it is probable that at least a few of the LeVecke Corp.’s Japanese customers will be feeling no pain, either, after they receive their first shipment from the Tustin-based company.

LeVecke, which has been bottling distilled spirits in the county since 1949, will make its first-ever export shipment this week--10,200 bottles, or 850 cases, of the company’s own Kentucky Walker brand bourbon. The order is scheduled to leave the Port of Los Angeles on Monday. The company bottled the whiskey Friday after receiving it from a distiller in Kentucky that shipped it in a 5,000-gallon tanker truck.

Family-owned LeVecke blends and bottles both its own brands and private-label spirits for many area liquor and food store chains, said J. Neil LeVecke, company president. In addition to whiskeys, it blends and bottles several brands of vodka, which begin life as 192-proof grain alcohol shipped to LeVecke in 30,000-gallon railroad tank cars. The state and federal governments, said Reed J. LeVecke, company chairman, collect $720,000 in taxes and tariffs on the alcohol in each of the 35 carloads--or 1.05 million gallons--that LeVecke turns into vodka each year.

In all, the company bottles about 2.4 million gallons of wine and spirits annually.