- We're actually transforming things that came from the ocean and from the land into something that then we are putting out into the world.

It's this kind of beautiful transfer.

- I remember the first time I went to my local liquor store, which is the one that I just go to to buy wine for my wife, and I was like, "Oh, that's my vodka.

I made it."

- [Pamela] Making it in the vast sea of liquor varieties are Dan Neff and Manya Rubinstein.

Neff, a Rhode Island native, and Rubinstein a Brown University grad, started ISCO, Industrious Spirit Company, five years ago.

It's in the valley neighborhood of Providence's West End.

- We're on the site of what was the Providence Steel and Iron Company.

They made structural and ornamental steel for over 100 years.

We really see ourselves as a continuation of that maker community, but in a different way.

- [Pamela] Way different.

As in what do you get when you mix agriculture and aquaculture?

An ocean potion of organically crafted spirits.

Oyster vodka is a first of its kind in the nation, named Ostreida, and seaweed gin is the newest offering, christened, Seaflow.

ISCO CEO Rubinstein says sustainably sourced vodka, gin, and bourbon, as well as a splash of experimental elixirs, allows them to.

- Have some fun, make delicious things, and do something that was not negatively impacting the environment and then sort of throw it in the creative hopper and you get us.

- How did you land on the idea of concocting sea brews as liquor?

- We were having some cocktails and we were enjoying some oysters and it suddenly occurred to us that a martini with your oysters is a delight, but why had nobody ever combined oysters and vodka together into one spirit?

It just seemed like a no-brainer.

- We hit a good sweet spot with like, "Oh, the ocean state, ocean stuff.

We can make this taste good."

- [Pamela] Speaking of taste, at Matunuck Oyster Bar, visited just days before it was devastated by fire, we were told these outpace even the state's beloved clam, the quahog, in popularity.

But still.

A lot of people love oysters, but you'll forgive me, there's a lot of people who say, "I'm not going to drink an oyster."

- Oh yeah.

- "Oyster liquor?

Ew."

- People have a strong reaction one way or another.

It's not fishy at all.

When you smell it, you get a little bit of almost like an ocean breeze.

When you taste the product, you get salinity, a little bit of brine, and minerality.

Sometimes a chef or a mixologist will add a little drop of saline or a little salt to wake up a flavor in a drink or in a food.

It basically does that.

- So what's next?

Like quahog grog?

- We're good with the mollusks.

- [Pamela] However, they are creating another classic Rhode Island flavor, Pizza Strip Vodka.

- We basically took all of the herbs and spices that you would use to make a delicious tomato sauce and we put those into our still.

We also had special pizza strips made for us and we put those in the still as well.

- You put pizza strips in the still?

- Yes.

- We did some tasting in the morning and then later on in the afternoon I burped and I was like, "Oh, we did it, we did it."

- It smells like bread in here.

It smells like a bakery.

- It does.

- ISCO distiller Eric Olson is a former brew master and Baby is a custom built 500 gallon hybrid kettle made of copper and brass from Louisville, Kentucky.

So this is a high end still?

- Very, this is the Ferrari of stills.

We started big.

(laughs) - [Pamela] Olson says the base spirit starts with regeneratively farmed corn.

- So everything for ISCO products starts as, its grain right on the farm, and we partner directly with small farms to give us the best organic grain to cook that down.

- [Pamela] Yeast is added to the still for fermentation.

Liquids combine and flavor is infused, sometimes with shellfish from Matunck's seven acre oyster farm in Ninigret Pond or seaweed from a Stonington kelp company or locally made pizza strips.

Olson describes his job as a mixture of the scientific and the artistic.

- I get to wake up every morning and make booze for a living and make whiskey and have all my friends and family think that life is just a big party when I come to work.

- [Pamela] The latest celebration, a Coastal Cask Bourbon to mark ISCO's five year anniversary.

- Which was also another riff on the sea, where we took a bourbon barrel and filled it with salty brine and dumped it out and then put our bourbon into it.

So I can do this all day.

(laughs) - [Pamela] The last stage for the local spirits, a final filtering of the alcohol for consumption, labeling, and distribution.

- Everything's by hand.

We have nothing computer, everything's analog.

Everything we do is a small batch.

You know, if you compare us to like a big maker, they're doing 40,000 gallons a day and we are doing 500.

- [Pamela] ISCO toasts itself as the first distillery in Providence since the days of prohibition, which may be true in theory, but in truth, ever independent Rhode Island largely ignored the 18th Amendment.

Famed New England crime boss, Raymond L.S.

Patriarca, is believed to have made bootleg booze in the basement of Camille's Restaurant on Federal Hill, serving it in coffee cups to mobsters meeting in the back alcoves.

But nowadays, instead of a speakeasy, ISCO's owners are glad to have a gathering spot for the community.

And from ripple.

(waves whooshing) - Cheers.

Five years.

- [Pamela] To tipple, the founders of ISCO hope customers find their ocean inspired drinks intoxicating.

- Ooh, that's delicious.

Wow.

- Delicious.