Proverbial Spirits is a food and drink brand founded in Park City, Utah, in 2022.
The product page for Proverbial Spirits' rum is written in pirate. It tells readers to "open ye mouths wide as these 'ere seas, ya land-lubbers" and signs off with "down the hatch, me hearties." The Park City distillery names each bottle after an old saying, then prints the same reply on every product page: rules were meant to be broken.
The founders met making commercial films, not drinks. Steven Currie and Rudy Lehfeldt-Ehlinger had lived in Park City for years, and Michael Kunde grew up in the Salt Lake Valley, Park City Magazine reported. They found they shared an interest in gin and spent three years experimenting before the brand launched in 2022. All three still worked in film when the magazine profiled them in 2023.
The homepage says they make their spirits from scratch, and that claim has a specific meaning here. Proverbial turns Utah corn and Idaho rye into a beer, then distills that beer into its own base spirit. SLUG Magazine set that against brands that buy their spirits from large producers such as MGP. "With our rum, it's just one distillation, but our gin ends up being three distillations by the time we're done," Currie told SLUG.
Gin was the reason for the whole thing. Currie told Visit Park City he is a gin drinker and "saw an opportunity to make a unique gin." No Rest for the Wicked gets its citrus from blood orange, which he calls the signature botanical. Juniper and black peppercorn are in there too.
The rum borrows its name, Loose Lips Sink Ships, from a World War II propaganda slogan. It is distilled from evaporated cane syrup and Caribbean molasses, according to the company's Utah's Own listing, and pitched as an easy rum to mix. Sugar cane and molasses are the exceptions to the local sourcing, SLUG noted, since Utah's dry climate is no place to find them.
The vodka was not supposed to happen. The founders first meant to stick to rum and gin, Park City Magazine reported, and the name of the bottle they made anyway, Never Say Never, owns up to it. Its product page says it is distilled from rye and corn.
A barrel-aged rum called Knock on Wood came next. It is aged in dessert wine barrels from Kunde Family Winery in Sonoma Valley, and Mountain Park City reported that one of the owners' grandfathers founded that winery. Visit Park City said the rum spends an extra year in a red dessert wine barrel before release.
There is no tasting room. Tours and tastings are for private events only, per Visit Park City. The Utah's Own listing sends buyers to Utah liquor stores or to the distillery itself. The founders told Park City Magazine they would like to add a tasting room or bar someday. Until then, the rum's product page does the talking, in pirate.
Every Proverbial label puts a body part behind the name, SLUG Magazine noted: lips on the Loose Lips Sink Ships rum and an eye with an orange iris on the gin.
