Name: Virginia alcohol makers form statewide consortium to get sanitizer to first responders
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Virginia alcohol makers form statewide consortium to get sanitizer to first responders

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AdvertisementBy The Virginian-PilotMay 08, 2020 at 11:00 amWhen Sibyl Pappas set out to buy hand sanitizer to keep bus drivers and customers safe at the Hampton Roads Transit Authority, she initially had nowhere to turn.“We’re a 100 million-dollar company; we had lots of suppliers, but none of them had hand sanitizer,” said Pappas, who works as chief engineering and facilities officer at HRT.Advertisement“We’d tried right from the beginning of the pandemic. We placed an order, and they said, ‘We’ll be able to deliver in three weeks.’ Every week we would call, and they’d say ‘three weeks out.’ It took us a few 'three weeks outs’ before we said, ‘We’re not going to get this.”But after a co-worker saw an article in The Virginian-Pilot , Pappas started calling the businesses in April. The first was out of stock. She got lucky on the second try.AdvertisementTarnished Truth in Virginia Beach got her the sanitizer she needed to help out her bus drivers, at a similar price to what Pappas said the HRT would have paid if it had gotten Purell through a distributor.“The fact we were able to buy locally, that’s an awesome service,” Pappas said.But up to now, distilleries offering sanitizer locally have been mostly been a catch-as-catch-can effort, with some distilleries going in and out of stock with each batch.Hospitals and fire departments have had to cobble together their own contacts with a relatively small list of distilleries making sanitizer, whether Chesapeake Bay Distilling in Virginia Beach or Blue Sky in Smithfield.Now, a consortium in Virginia is trying to make that process a lot easier. The Virginia Brewers Guild, the Virginia Association of Cider Makers, The Virginia Wineries Association and the Virginia Manufacturers Association have banded to help produce and distribute hand sanitizer to first responders and government entities.“It’s all the people making alcohol saying, ‘How can we respond?” said George Hodson, owner of Veritas Vineyard in Charlottesville and president of the Wineries Association. “What basically started happening is that distilleries were already doing it, noticing that need and responding as best they could. But as it built organically, we realized just how great that need was.”Virginia’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority gave distilleries the right to make hand sanitizer on March 18. On April 23, breweries also gained the right to mix sanitizer, using ethanol and other ingredients bought on the market. Breweries such as Old Ox in Auburn and Lickinghole Creek in Goochland have already begun producing their own hand sanitizer.Wineries and cideries can’t produce sanitizer right now, Hodson said. But high-concentration alcohol is distilled using products made by other alcohol producers: Whiskey is made from mash that has to be brewed first, while brandies are distilled from fermented grapes.Advertisement“Distilleries can take product we won’t use — spoiled wine, beer that didn’t work out — they can take those products and distill them. ... We provide the substrate distilleries use to make sanitizer,” Hodson said.For Hodson, it’s also a matter helping distilleries so they don’t have to shoulder all of the effort.“There are a lot more wineries and breweries than distillers,” Hodson said. “Our customers have supported us over the years. We want to share the burden.”They haven’t kept exact numbers, Hodson said, but wineries alone have donated thousands of gallons to make sanitizer in the few weeks since the effort started.The project is being coordinated in Yorktown by retired U.S. Army Col. Bob Morris.Morris, who spent 30 years working logistics and acquisitions in war-torn countries, is donating time and expertise from his consulting company, The Center for Applied Innovation.AdvertisementThe first big problem, Morris said, was that ethanol prices had jumped dramatically, often because of secondhand sellers taking advantage of the coronavirus crisis to make money on mark-ups. This occurred even as demand for ethanol went down, as America used far less gasoline.“In one day the price of ethanol went up 140%,” Morris said. “It used to be $2 to $4 a gallon, but it went to some places charging as much as $16. Demand went down dramatically, but you end up with — we’ll just call them people — getting in and buying the stuff, and deciding they’d resell it.”Morris was able to connect directly to the ethanol manufacturers so distillers and breweries could get ethanol at fair prices.“The manufacturers were fantastic,” he said. “They came back and said, ‘That’s crazy, we’ll work on the transport and do what we can. You don’t need to get gouged.”The other thing Morris helped with is making sure that government agencies know where to go to find supply if they don’t already have a relationship with a local distillery. Now, hospitals or government agencies who need sanitizer can fill out a form at . Morris’ company will then help connect them to a distillery or brewery producing sanitizer.Wineries, cideries, distilleries or breweries who want to help the effort can also sign on on that page, Morris said. And so can people who want to donate money to the effort.AdvertisementIndividual families looking for sanitizer should not go to the site, Morris said. The effort is designed to help get sanitizer to larger organizations. In Hampton Roads, they’re better off looking for sanitizer at distilleries such as Ironclad, Tarnished Truth, Chesapeake Bay, or Caiseal who are producing sanitizer locally.Since early April, Smithfield’s Blue Sky Distillery has been devoting much of its efforts to producing hand sanitizer for local first repsonders, and also sells to the public each Saturday. But through the consortium, said Mark Rangos, he was just able to arrange for bulk ethanol delivery.“Right now we’re working on a big order for the Virginia Department of Emergency Management,” Rangos said.DailyStart your morning in-the-know with the day's top stories. &gt; Tiny Dida’s distillery — a spin-off of Rappahannock Cellars winery — is another distillery that signed on with the new consortium. They’ve already made close to two thousand gallons of hand sanitizer, distiller Allan Delmare said.Delmare was initially skeptical when his father mentioned that the distillery could fill a local need by making sanitizer. But eventually, first responders kept seeking him out.“I go to my dad’s office, and he gave me that ‘I told you so’ look,” Delmare remembered. “EMS and hospitals started asking for hundreds of gallons, and we saw an incredible need. We’ve got alcohol available; why not give the hand sanitizer to people who need it? We went the donation route, for better or worse: It’s very expensive to use grapes to make hand sanitizer.”AdvertisementThe winery and distillery received some money through fundraising efforts, and now donates its sanitizer through the new consortium. Most recently, that included 20 gallons to a sheriff’s department in north-central Virginia.“You know, the ingredients are out there,” Delmare said. “It’s all about coordinating, organizing and making it happen. We’ve got this consortium started. I’m proud to be a small factor in it.”The Helpers is a feature from The Virginian-Pilot and the Daily Press about people and groups who are stepping up to help others during the coronavirus pandemic. To read the other stories in the stories, visit or .Matthew Korfhage, 757-446-2318, matthew.korfhage@pilotonline.com Advertisement

AdvertisementBy The Virginian-PilotMay 08, 2020 at 11:00 amWhen Sibyl Pappas set out to buy hand sanitizer to keep bus drivers and customers safe at the Hampton Roads Transit Authority, she initially had nowhere to turn.“We’re a 100 million-dollar company; we had lots of suppliers, but none of them had hand sanitizer,” said Pappas, who works as chief engineering and facilities officer at HRT.Advertisement“We’d tried right from the beginning of the pandemic. We placed an order, and they said, ‘We’ll be able to deliver in three weeks.’ Every week we would call, and they’d say ‘three weeks...

Virginia alcohol makers form statewide consortium to get sanitizer to first responders

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