In 2023, Pullman’s Paddock Spirits was a brand-new company. Today, it sells one of the best ready-to-drink cocktails in the world –at least according to the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

The Paddock team, consisting of owners Nick Lee, Nick Robertson, Tony Poston and husband-and-wife pair Blake and Cory Preston, flew to San Francisco to accept an award for “Top Vodka-Based RTD” for their Strawberry and Red Apple canned cocktail on Oct. 6. The cocktail won alongside drinks from Vosa Spirits and Caddy Cocktails, both celebrity-owned brands.

The San Francisco competition is the largest and oldest of its kind in the world, according to its website. This year there were more than 5,000 entries.

“It didn’t feel real,” Blake Preston said of Paddock’s success at the competition. “The cans we submitted were our third batch ever. Many of the other brands had years on us with budgets I can’t even imagine being put into research and flavor development.”

Paddock Spirits started out with only the Prestons.

In 2020, when their Pullman nightclub Esti Bravo had to close during the pandemic, the couple started canning cocktails to pay the company’s bills, Blake Preston said.

“We stopped canning once we were able to reopen to focus on getting guests back into Etsi,” she said, but “every once in a while I’d mention to Cory that we should do our canned cocktail again.”

She convinced him in March 2023, with one stipulation.

“If it didn’t go anywhere in a year we would scrap it and I’d never bring canned cocktails up again,” Blake Preston said.

The same month one year later, without telling their business partners, the Prestons submitted their four flagship flavors to the competition: Strawberry and Red Apple, Cucumber and Lime, Watermelon and Guava and Cantaloupe and Ginger.

“We figured, if we lose, no bad feelings. If we won, pretty great news to share,” Blake Preston said.

They did win. Their reactions?

“Pure shock,” Preston said.

“We thought the product we were making was good, it’s nice to know we weren’t the only ones,” she said.

In addition to Paddock Spirits and Esti Bravo, the Prestons own Crybaby Café and The Emporium nightclub in Pullman.

“I don’t think we’d have this early success without the decade of work we put in at Etsi Bravo,” Preston said.

The award might also translate to more success for Paddock Spirits.

“We’re excited for what the win could potentially mean for our company,” Preston said, noting the effects of a 2001 win for a then-small company, Tito’s Vodka. “They went from producing 10,000 cases a year to over two million a year and are now up to about 12 million cases per year.”

Paddock Spirits recently signed with a large distributor, Preston said.

“Come November we will be in many more locations across Washington and Idaho, and hopefully more states shortly after,” she said.