Noire Distillery: a two-year-old startup with a centuries-old history announces a new partnership with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
by James Paul
Kenyan Hicks founded Pittsburgh's first black-owned distillery, Noire Distillery less than two years ago, and has just launched the first official Gin of the Pittsburgh Steelers. While their new distillery's rise may seem rapid, it's a complex story roughly 180 years in the making.
“All of us, so many of us, have such a great story of where we come from,” Hicks remarked. “And being able to share that through food and drink is a lot of times the way we communicate who we are.” Noire Distillery is one of three Pennsylvania-based distilleries selected for the roster of the new Steelers Stillhouse Initiative, which includes creating team-themed spirits with limited edition branded bottling. As part of this partnership, the distillery's new Noire 74 American Gin will be available at six locations within Acrisure Stadium throughout the football season, as well as at Steelers' events and his bottle shop year-round.
As Hicks geared up for the Steelers' NFL Draft Party at Acrisure Stadium, where he introduced their partnership amidst 2024 Draft Picks, current players and coaches, and Steelers legends, he underscored the significance of his distillery's story. The narrative that Noire Distillery tells, particularly through its Noire Expedition American Gin, is pivotal to his foray into distilling. Hicks referred to the bottling of Noire Expedition—which translates to "Black Journey"—as a "vehicle" for sharing the history of his enslaved ancestor, Moses Godfrey.
"Sharing bits of all of my background is what this brand has become, especially in Noire Expedition — that bottle tells my family's story dating back to our eldest ancestor," Hicks explained. Godfrey, born into slavery around 1840, secured his freedom at the age of 25 and dedicated his life to acquiring land. By the age of 70, the U.S. Census recognized him as an employer and a Black business owner during the Jim Crow Era.
The lineage connecting Hicks to Godfrey includes Godfrey's sons who were drafted into WWI and another son who, during the Great Migration, moved to Michigan to work for the Ford Motor Company in the era of the Model T.
Hicks' narrative began in Upstate New York. Like Godfrey's first-borns, he served in the military, attaining the rank of Marine Sergeant before relocating to Alexandria, VA, with his wife to pursue a degree in human resource management. He settled in Pittsburgh around 2014, where he was a technical recruiter for leading autonomous driving companies, including Aurora and Aptiv, before launching his recruiting firm, Broadwing Talent, in 2018.
"Pittsburgh is great because it has all of the assets of a larger city, like a major airport, and the infrastructure that smaller towns don't have," Hicks said. "But there's still such a great community feel here that you might not get in other cities."
As is true for many of his fellow distillers, Hicks' passion for spirits began as a consumer and evolved into creation. After guest bartending stints in Pittsburgh, he ventured into production. A complex, generation-sweeping story like Godfrey's required complex flavors — leading Hicks to choose gin, with its versatile botanicals and myriad combinations.
After sitting in on a few distillations, trying some of the best gins from across the world, and embarking on extensive experimentation with recipes, Hicks opened Noire Distillery and bottle shop, a discreet black building in Lower Lawrenceville, on Juneteenth in 2022.
"I'm very happy with us being a mom-and-pop shop. I think that Pittsburgh roots for our kind of company,” Hicks said. “But you've got to sell, you've got to get it to the masses. I just genuinely know what we're capable of, and I’m excited the Steelers are partnering with us on that journey."
In addition to all of the long hours and hard work he’s putting in, he noted how luck played a part in this new opportunity. The partnership with the Steelers came out of a chance encounter with a Noire customer who was wearing a Steelers jersey, and happened to work for the team, Hicks said. They traded cards, and an initial meeting was held the following week.
Several months later, after working with the team ownership and league leadership, Noire Distillery officially joined the Steelers Stillhouse program. As the Steelers' official gin producer, Hicks' initial guess for impending sales through the partnership is in the range of 10’s of thousands of bottles of Noire 74. At the time of the interview, they were crafting bottle seven of the very first batch for the Steelers' Draft Party.
"The distillery is built to [scale] — and we just hadn't had that key partnership to help us unlock and stretch our limits," Hicks said. "So now that we have that first partnership, we're going all in on making it happen.”
Selling tens of thousands of bottles also means sharing Godfrey’s and his son’s stories with thousands and thousands of customers. Hicks said while so many Black lineages have been lost to history, he’s going to make sure his “at least [gets] some shine."
"When you walk into a liquor store, bar, or restaurant and look at the shelves, the stories being told through those bottles... there's probably a 99% chance that they don't come from someone who looks like me or Godfrey," Hicks said. "I believe that craft brands, including our distillery, have the opportunity to bring this important storytelling to the forefront, sharing the drink, food, and culture that was once relegated to the back of the bar."