Our Story

LOCALLY OWNED & FAMILY-RUN

Mark Bloomquist dreamed up the idea of Blue Shark Vodka in early 2011. Later that year he traveled to Maui and discussed with his daughter Brooke. The pair decided to create a vodka so smooth it would iterate their deep sea diving adventures and they enlisted the rest of their family to help. From Mark’s Naval career to their family’s deep love of the ocean, marine life and life on Wrightsville Beach, all signs pointed to making their vodka focus on bottling life at sea.

The first bottle of Blue Shark Vodka was produced and sold in 2019. Above creating a top shelf spirit, Blue Shark Vodka is helping conserve blue sharks by partnering with research organizations tagging blues around the Atlantic.

THE TALE OF 4 BOTTLES

At the inception of Blue Shark Vodka, we imagined recreating a ship-in-a-bottle. What translated was a Blue Shark circling the bottom of a bottle, created with hand-blown glass. Our original shark-in-a-bottle design won a SIP design award in 2020 and stands out on every bar shelf.

But our bottle wasn’t built in a day. It took four prototypes to reach the final product you see today.

The goal was always to create a bottle that matched the excellence of our vodka and after four tries, we finally arrived.

BOTTLE #1

We joke this turned out to be more of a whale in a bottle! We created the first prototype with glass blowing artists. The design included an anatomically incorrect blue shark and a blue bottle.‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎

BOTTLE #2

We went with a lighter blue bottle and a dark blue glass shark inside. We determined our blue bottle did not show off all the wonderful clarity our smooth vodka possesses. The shark still needed to be smaller.⁣

BOTTLE #3

As we created this third prototype, we began to understand our vodka’s qualities so much more, like the smoothness and clarity. This bottle was good, but needed to be taller, stronger, sexier and with a more defined blue shark.

BOTTLE #4

Finally a taller bottle with a stronger base. We made minimal tweaks by reducing the shark size even more (we wanted customers to get more vodka after all) and we sized down the coral the shark sits on.

Our Story

LOCALLY OWNED & FAMILY-RUN

THE TALE OF 4 BOTTLES

BOTTLE #1

BOTTLE #1

BOTTLE #2

BOTTLE #2

BOTTLE #3

BOTTLE #3

BOTTLE #4

BOTTLE #4

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