Christi Lower’s Whiskey Fascination Inspired Highline Spirits
Christi Lower, CEO of Highline Spirits, in front of racked whiskey barrels.
Sitting by a campfire, sipping whiskey and reading a textbook on distilling – that was the first time Christi Lower considered launching her own spirits brand.
For years, Christi had been chasing her fascination with whiskey and the chemistry behind it. It drew her in. She tried to satisfy her curiosity with extensive research during the pandemic but she kept going down that rabbit hole until her husband finally suggested she make it a career.
As the founder of Highline Spirits, Christi honors her fascination with spirits and distillation but also aims to create a transparent business that clears the smoke and mirrors around common industry practices. In a way, she hopes to build an honest relationship with her customers and one that welcomes new faces to the industry.
Christi’s interest in spirits inspired a passion – one that drew her from a 15-year career in medicine. Now she’s running the show with a talented team surrounding her in Dexter, Michigan.
The Spark
Before whiskey drew her in, Christi practiced medicine as a Physician’s Assistant in pediatric surgery critical care.
“It was very academic, it was very high level, it was very complex, and it was exhausting,” Christi admitted. “I loved it. It was incredibly rewarding, but I just got really burnt out.”
In the fall of 2019, Christi stepped away from the career she’d built just before the pandemic shut everything down. Soon she found herself drawing on her academic background while home-schooling her four children.
“I enjoy educating,” Christi said. “But teaching second-grade math, [it’s] not the same as math was when I was a kid. It was hard. So I moved from a very challenging academic environment where I was learning something new all the time to trying to figure out how to do the new math and keep my kids on a virtual schedule. And I needed something more.”
Around that time, she dove deeper into the science of distillation and the chemistry behind whiskey. For more than a decade, she’d been a fan of the spirit. But in her quest to learn something other than second-grade math, she dug into the science of it.
“It is not only the flavor profile that excites me but also the chemistry behind how it happens,” Christi recalled. “That chemistry is really what drew me in, and the distillation conversation and then the blending and the finishing. During COVID, I was reading a distillation textbook, and my husband was like, ‘What is happening here?’ I was like, ‘I'm fascinated by this. This is something I'm excited about.’”
Beyond the intricacies of the process and the science, another aspect of distillation inspired Christi: the freedom to try new things.
“The way that medicine works is you don't just try something and fly by the seat of your pants,” Christi noted. And the opportunity to innovate and even do a little trial and error led her to further research and reading.
Christi sought out more and more opportunities to learn. She read whatever she could find, took courses, earned a Distillery Management Certificate through the MBA program at the University of Louisville and networked with like-minded individuals at events hosted by the ACSA and other similar organizations. When she found a welcoming community, she kept going. Running on pure curiosity and her drive to learn, she became more than just the average enthusiast. But she hadn’t yet considered it as a career.
Over a campfire in South Dakota, Christi was sipping whiskey and reading one of her textbooks. Her husband Jeff suggested she consider launching a spirits brand – and running it. They were just kicking off a road trip that would take them to the Pacific Northwest and back. She considered the possibility throughout the rest of the journey, realizing it could set a great example for her children – taking the brave step of following her passion toward a career.
“The more I was thinking about it, the more I started researching,” Christi said. “The more I was like, Yeah, this is something that I should do.”
The Flame
At the helm of Highline Spirits, Christi personally blends all her premium small-batch spirits, working closely with distillers, selecting and tasting everything with a well-trained palate. She leads the company in all respects, spending hours in QuickBooks to balance finances or racking a shipment of 30 barrels.
As one of a few female CEOs in the business, Christi recognizes the importance of surrounding herself with diverse people with diverse perspectives. Blending wasn’t just about the whiskey.
“Not only in our spirits are we blending, but I am purposefully hiring within my company to bring different voices to the table,” she explained. “We are a motley crew of three right now. We are not that big. But the intent as we continue to grow is to make sure that there is a diversity and representation of the people behind the brand.”
For Christi, working with individuals who have different backgrounds and perspectives leads to more creativity in developing products. That team has become the foundation on which Christi has blended Highline’s Bourbon, Triple Rye, Kentucky Whiskey and Straight American Whiskey.
Over time, Christi observed how blenders often don’t get the respect that distillers do.
“There is a lot of emphasis placed on the Master Distiller, which rightly so, Master Distillers have an excellent skill set, and they put what's in the barrel and make it a quality barrel,” Christi explained. “But I truly believe that whiskey is a living, breathing thing, and you can put an excellent distillate into an excellent barrel and put it into a rickhouse and it sits for four or five or six or 10 years, and you may or may not get an excellent product out. The master blenders are there to maintain consistency or to create something that is unique and a new line within a brand.”
With that in mind, Christi designed Highline Spirits to be a more transparent and honest distillery, aiming to educate and illuminate what happens in the blending process. In her own tasting room, she leads customers through tastings, and plans to launch whiskey blending classes in 2024.
“I just think that the more you talk about what's happening behind the scenes, the more welcoming you are to any enthusiast that is able to come in and experience your spirit and experience your brand,” Christi said. “We are a little bit different in that way. We also aren't ashamed of the fact that we're blending.”
The Fuel
Christi takes great pride in being one of the few female CEOs in the spirits industry. However, she admits that it’s led to challenges that she’s had to navigate while launching a distillery.
“I ran into a significant amount of obstruction,” Christi reveals. Emails would not be returned from vendors and calls were ignored. However, when Christi’s husband sent the same emails and made the same calls, he got a response.
When Christi met with peers during a Women in Distilling call, she heard similar stories – fellow women running into blockades and being overlooked or dismissed. It occurred to her that this had everything to do with being a woman in a male-dominated industry. But that wasn’t exactly a new experience for her.
“I worked in surgery, which – when I started [in medicine] 15 years ago – I was one of two women in the department,” Christi divulged. “When I left, there was significantly more women and more diversity. They did an excellent job.”
Several movements and organizations are working toward creating a more diverse community in spirits too. Christi specifically called out Our Whisky, a non-profit organization from Becky Paskin dedicated to representing diverse individuals in the industry. She also noted that Women in Distilling and other groups working to highlight women in the industry are also moving the whole community in the right direction.
Christi also nodded toward mentorship programs that can help welcome new individuals into the industry with a bit of guidance and support they may not find elsewhere. But the issues persist even today.
“I opened my tasting room three weeks ago and every night, I talk to all the patrons that come in,” Christi reminisced from her September 2023 launch, “And every night at least one man says to me, ‘Do you even drink whiskey?’”
To keep building momentum for women and members of other marginalized communities in the industry, Christi sees promise in diverse hiring practices.
“I think in my previous career, there was an intentionality around diversifying gender, race and sexual orientation,” Christi noted. “There was an intentional strategy around the hiring, recognizing that a diverse input gets you an exceptional output. Hopefully, as we continue to grow and move forward, that is the intent for us.”
It’s a strategy Christi is implementing in her own business and she hopes it results in a welcoming and open environment. In fact, she hopes Highline Spirits is remembered for its efforts to make whiskey accessible to everyone, regardless of their identity or experience level.
“That's what I hope that Highline does,” Christi said. “I hope it gives people the comfort to feel that they can access different things in their world.”
