June is Pride Month, but this year, revelers in much of the inland West will have a new way to celebrate all year long. Ogden’s Own Distillery, based in Ogden, Utah, recently released a new 2022 edition of Five Husbands Vodka featuring five notable members of the Utah LGBTQ community on the label, and it’s now going to be available year-round.
Five Husbands was first introduced in 2019 as a tongue-in-cheek riff on Ogden’s Own’s popular Five Wives Vodka, itself an irreverent take on the historic practice of polygamy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The first Five Husbands release sported a label with five strapping nude men, each holding a strategically positioned rooster, with the faces of five Ogden’s Own employees photoshopped onto their bodies.
Over time, the brand evolved to showcase not just Ogden’s Own’s staff, but local activists and community members from the Utah LGBTQ community. This year, the brand put out an open call for a new set of “Husbands” for the label. They received more than 100 submissions.
“I could easily have had 12 Husbands on this label,” says Mark Fine, CEO and president of Ogden’s Own. “It was not an easy choice.” The 2022 Husbands include Madazon Can-Can, a nonbinary transmasculine burlesque performer and drag king; Bryce Jackson, co-founder of Stonewall Sports, an LGBTQ-focused recreational sports league; Matt Easton, a seventh-generation Mormon who came out during his 2019 valedictorian speech at Brigham Young University; Bryan Woolley, a celebrity chef and operatic singer; and Christian Harvey, who performs under the name Hoe Shi Minh.
The “Husband” gig isn’t just about being a handsome face on the front of a bottle. Ogden’s Own says they’re committed to supporting each Husband’s activism and messages, including filming videos highlighting the personal stories of each Husband, supporting their activities in the community, and of course, reserving a spot for them on their 2022 Pride float.
Five Husbands Vodka’s distribution is also expanding to encompass Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Wyoming, and Michigan. One to two dollars from each $19.99 bottle sale will be donated to LGBTQ-oriented organizations in each state where it is sold. Last year, Fine says the brand donated just over $20,000 to Utah Pride Center and Equality Utah. While this year’s bottling was released in June to coincide with Pride, Fine says the 2022 release is going to be available year-round. “We’re not just about doing something for Pride. From January 1 to December 31, we’re always there,” said Fine, referring to the company’s ongoing support of LGBTQ causes.
Utah remains a socially conservative state, but Fine says the response to Five Husbands has been positive. “Salt Lake has one of the biggest LGBTQ communities in the country,” says Fine. And besides, Ogden’s Own isn’t afraid to ruffle a few feathers. In 2012, the Idaho Liquor Division issued a statement saying Five Wives Vodka was “offensive to a prominent segment of our population and will not be carried,” only relenting after national media picked up the story.
“Life isn’t easy. Not as individuals, not as companies, not as consumers. Sometimes, you have to take risks,” says Fine. “These are stories that need to be told. We will lose people because it’s a little risky, but it’s worth the risk.”
