Winter 2026 51 P R O F I L E “ANYONE CAN DO THINGS RESPONSIBLY. IT’S JUST THAT THAT CONVERSATION HASN’T BEEN HAD.” ← Emily Darchuk at home mixing up cocktails. on the “Grist 50” list of climate fixers; earlier this year, Beverage Information Group named her part of its “40 Under 40.” In 2022, Ben & Jerry’s launched an ice cream collaboration (the flavor is “Dublin Mudslide”); this year, Salt & Straw rang. In the past five years, the company has diverted some five gallons of whey for each bottle it produces — transforming it into what the industry categorizes as a “specialty spirit,” which is to say one that almost defies category entirely. As a result, Darchuk has had to forge her own path. I met Darchuk this summer at a bar in Southeast Portland, where Wheyward was on the menu. The bartender set glasses down in front of us: One drink was translucent green-yellow, comprising Wheyward Spirit, a bergamot liqueur and a local amaro, and embellished with a lime wheel. The other was clear reddish-pink, layering Wheyward Spirit with absinthe and strawberry syrup, and topped with a generous sprig of mint. “Oh,” she said, “it’s beautiful.” Darchuk didn’t have much interest in spirits before she began making one. When she came to Oregon State in 2013 to study milk-tanker sanitation as part of a master’s degree in food science, she had five years of industry experience behind her — most of it in developing plantbased dairy products. I asked, as we admired the cocktails, what she used to like drinking. “Um,” she began. “Beer?” But she was an ardent upcycler with a lifelong interest in where food comes from — not only nutritionally, but also socially. “Food is really powerful for the ability to talk about more complex things — about water or carbon or waste or agriculture,” she said. She knew that you could basically ferment anything. (Even Skittles. You could make vodka out of rainbow candy if you really wanted.) And during her research, she saw firsthand how much whey the dairy industry produced. Whey is a problem for producers, who struggle to get rid of it, and for the environment. Farmers pour it on fields, mix it with livestock feed, add it to a biodigester or simply dump it. When it meets waterways, whey can cause algal blooms, killing fish. Even whey protein powder — a booming market due to the national obsession with “protein-maxxing” and appetite-suppressing drugs like Ozempic — only uses a small amount of liquid whey, leaving behind a lactose-rich broth. After completing her degree and working for a few years, Darchuk returned to Oregon to pursue an MBA at the University of Oregon. The whey problem still nagged at her. Sustainability and innovation, she thought, weren’t mutually exclusive. “Anyone can do things responsibly,” WHEYWARD’S SPIRITED BEAVER 1 oz Wheyward Spirit 1 oz blood orange juice (fresh or bottled) 3/4 oz fresh lime juice 1/2 oz orange liqueur (Cointreau, Triple Sec or Grand Marnier) 1/4 oz simple syrup Combine all ingredients and shake on ice. Serve in a rocks glass on a large ice cube with a maraschino cherry garnish. Cheers —and Go Beavs! Find Wheyward Spirit’s products online at wheywardspirit.com, as well as in retail locations in Oregon, California, Wisconsin and Nebraska. she told me.“It’s just that that conversation hasn’t been had.” This commitment had stood out even in her graduate research, according to Lizbeth Goddik,’89, Ph.D. ’99, Darchuk’s advisor and the head of the Department of Food Science and Technology. “Our students today are in it because they want to save the world,” said Goddik, who has also researched whey-based alcohol products. “She was one of the first ones to really recognize this.” (Because of Darchuk’s early success, industry experience and interest in sustainability, Goddik recruited her to serve on the department’s advisory committee.) Though other whey-based spirits exist — TMK Creamery, in Canby (co-owned by Tess Koch, ’97, and Todd Koch, ’98), produces a smallcontinued batch vodka called Cowcohol; the Native-owned Copper Crow Distillery makes whey gin, whey vodka and others — Darchuk’s product is distinguished by its nonconformity. There are a whole host of regulations that determine what makes a gin a gin or a vodka a vodka, and Darchuk felt these labels homogenized products and lacked the transparency and ethics that she strove for. The byzantine, state-by-state rules for distributing liquor — a vestige of Prohibition — also makes it all but impossible to
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