Meet the Indianapolis woman bringing the whiskey craze to the Hoosier state

It seems like everyone has their own liquor line these days. Bourbon by Peyton Manning. Tequila from The Rock. Skull-shaped vodka courtesy of a former Ghostbuster. No, not Bill Murray — he’s merely a spokesperson for a different vodka brand.

The deluge of spirit start-ups in the last decade is enough to make your head spin. Who’s next, your physician?

In the case of Juliet Schmalz, yes, actually. Schmalz, a 50-year-old former anesthesiologist from Indianapolis, co-founded Fortune’s Fool whiskey in 2019. As store shelves fill up with celebrity-endorsed libations, Schmalz is trying to thrive in a historically male-dominated industry.

Schmalz knew she couldn’t do the same thing her whole career. For years she floated around the “outskirts of medicine,” working in integrative medicine and acupuncture. While she itched to try something new, she struggled with the idea of striking out on her own.

“I could never take that leap,” she said. “Starting a business terrified me.”

Then she met her husband, Steve Sorel, in 2017. Sorel is an Indianapolis businessman, no stranger to fundraising and venture capital. As the pair’s relationship grew more serious, Sorel asked Schmalz where she wanted to take her career.

“And I wanted to create whiskey,” she said.

Schmalz began developing her taste for whiskey as a 21-year-old at Indiana University, where she studied biology and rode for the now-defunct, then-dominant Landsharks Little 500 team. Her drink of choice was Maker’s Mark and Diet Coke. Over time, she upgraded the whiskey and ditched the Coke — often with a sideways glance from a bartender skeptical of a woman ordering whiskey neat.

In 2018, she used vacation time from her anesthesiologist job to attend Moonshine University in bourbon-crazed Louisville, where she took various crash courses on the ins and outs of whiskey production. In 2023, Fortune’s Fool made its debut with The Prelude, a 32-month-aged straight rye whiskey with notes of fruit and butterscotch.

Fortune’s Fool’s theatrical motif comes from Schmalz’ first name, which she shares with the heroine from William Shakespeare’s famed tragedy. Romeo declares, “I am fortune’s fool,” after killing his rival, Tybalt, in Act 3 of “Romeo and Juliet.”

Schmalz admits she doesn’t have any deep personal ties to Shakespeare’s work. She’s read “Romeo and Juliet” twice, once in high school and again after settling on Fortune’s Fool’s name. Earlier in the branding process, one of Schmalz’ marketing partners pitched just “Juliet.”

“I’m like, no, no, no,” Schmalz said.

Naming her company after herself was a bridge too far for Schmalz, who has had to become much more outgoing in the last few years, networking with distributors and talking to potential customers at tastings. She felt far more at home in the background of doctors' offices, briefly chatting with patients for five minutes or so before the anesthesia kicked in.

“I was much more comfortable under a rock,” she said.

In medicine, Schmalz was always risk-averse. Starting a business, meanwhile, is full of risk. It’s taking swings and making your voice heard, the latter of which doesn’t always come easily for women.

While Schmalz said she hasn’t faced much resistance in the whiskey industry, she occasionally feels like she isn’t taken as seriously as her male contemporaries. Sometimes when she’s hit a wall with clients, her husband has followed up instead and, “Oh, suddenly the answers came in.”

It’s frustrating, but it’s life. It’s the same way in medicine, Schmalz said. She’s proud to run a female-owned company, and she hopes it helps her stand out amid the over 90% of distillers that are men.

Of course, branding only goes so far. Schmalz and her team obsess over details in their whiskey, from the wood in their barrels to the grain in their mash bill. Fortune’s Fool uses barrels from Napa, California cooperage Seguin Moreau, which leaves American oak staves outside in the elements for two years so precipitation can wash away bitter tannins in the wood.

The wood is then dried in a kiln and roughly shaped into a barrel. Seguin Moreau’s coopers char the barrels over an oak chip fire, amplifying the subtle flavors in the wood and relaxing the staves so a cooper can hammer metal rings around them and give the barrel its characteristic rotund shape.

“Each individual barrel tastes different than the other,” Schmalz said. “It’s like an art and science in and of itself,” Schmalz said.

Finally, the whiskey, which Schmalz spends about a month testing and tweaking with a Kentucky distillery, goes in the barrels to age. Fortune’s Fool’s most recent batch, The Overture, aged for 39 months. A well-versed whiskey aficionado will pick up hints of vanilla, citrus and baking spices beneath the hot alcohol. Less experienced drinkers are encouraged to sip cautiously or mix in a cocktail — 109.4-proof straight rye is a bit of a jump from Maker’s Mark and Diet Coke.

At $60 per bottle, Fortune’s Fool isn't your typical entry-level spirit, but Schmalz hopes even those unfamiliar with whiskey will take a chance on it. She’s seen the height of whiskey culture in Kentucky and believes there’s room for it in neighboring Indiana.

“We too can drink that way, we too can produce that way,” she said. “Let’s take some of that ownership. We’re right here.”

Contact dining and drinks reporter Bradley Hohulin at bhohulin@indystar.com. You can follow him on Twitter/X @BradleyHohulin.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: A whiskey boom in Indiana? Meet the woman trying to make it happen.