For the intrepid Montana adventurer, a trek to Spotted Bear Ranger District ought to be at the top of any list. Fifty miles of washboard will get you to this little haven tucked between the Swan and Lewis mountain ranges, where the South Fork of the Flathead River spills clear from the glaciated heights of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
“It’s one of my favorite little pockets,” says Lauren Oscilowski, owner and managing partner at Spotted Bear Spirits, a distillery in Whitefish that just celebrated its tenth anniversary. “It made sense, around a campfire one night, to bring that name into it.”
When reflecting on what Lauren wants Spotted Bear Spirits to provide for the community, the campfire is also a perfect metaphor.
“It’s just become a gathering place and a place of celebration,” she says of their tasting room on Railway Street, “a really inclusive place that welcomes everyone. We see a lot of familiar faces. I really love that sense of community.”
Inclusivity and community-building extend beyond the walls of their tasting room or production facility. It’s in how Spotted Bear Spirits shows up for their neighbors.
“We’re able to do ‘cocktails for a cause,’ month-long donations to nonprofits that align with our company ethos,” Lauren says. “We’re currently doing one for Whitefish Legacy Partners and we’ve also adopted a portion of a trail where we go and do trail maintenance. Integrating into the community felt important to me.”
This integration is something that’s at the heart of Spotted Bear Spirits. They make it a central aspect of their business to source locally, to make Western Montana an essence in their product.
“We want to offer cocktails that are rooted in place, so we work with local farms for some of our cocktail ingredients and also some of our product ingredients,” Lauren says. “For example, for our Mountain Mint Peppermint Schnapps—which is similar to Rumple Minze but way better—we work with a farmer in Creston who’s a third-generation mint grower. I think it really brings this great flavor profile to the product and, again, it really roots us in place.”
The list of local growers and crops that give Spotted Bear their bonafide “made in Montana” stamp is rather extensive: hinkelhatz spicy peppers, an heirloom variety they use in their tequila-adjacent agave spirit; sugar beets from Eastern Montana for their vodka, and locally sourced huckleberries.
Anyone who’s spent more than a little time in Montana knows that we take care of each other in a particularly unique way. Lauren and Spotted Bear Spirits have leapt headfirst into this network of mutual support that sets Montanans apart.
Hand-in-hand with the communities of care that sprout here organically is also a spirit of fierce independence, and as Lauren says, that helps a lot as a woman-owned business in an industry that’s very much dominated by men. Up until two years ago, Spotted Bear was the only woman-led distillery in the whole state, out of 20-some distilleries.
“You have to have a thicker skin,” Lauren says. “I can’t tell you how many times, if I’m standing next to Bo [Spotted Bear’s head distiller], it’s Bo’s distillery. Or, if it is mine, they’ll say, ‘oh, and your husband.’ There’s definitely a lot of that you bump up against, but I think it can kind of be your superpower.”
Lauren and the team have, as she says, “leaned into the feminine a little more” with their 2021 rebrand. Their upcoming whiskey line will feature “strong frontier woman” imagery on the label, as they seek to tell the stories of the ‘trailblazettes’ that paved the way.
“I’m proud of it,” she says of the business she started a little over ten years ago. “I think it takes a little more grit and determination to build a business as a woman in a male-dominated industry.