He succeeded with celebrity cars, and now his Polish vodka is taking off in Miami

Sometimes a tragedy gives rise to a business. And that business sometimes rises to a family legacy, one worthy to leave to children and grandchildren.

In 2019, Cuban-American entrepreneur Alex Vega was shot three times in his Southwest Miami-Dade driveway. After the shooting, Vega, owner of The Auto Firm, known for customizing the “most expensive toys” of the rich and famous, made a promise to himself: to leave his family a business, and the financial security that comes with it, beyond his role as car guru.

That’s when Vega started to market his own vodka, Avorza, which is produced in Poland. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the vodka has seen an increase in orders and sales because of a boycott of Russian vodka.

“It has been an incredible journey. Many people told me that I was crazy, that there were many vodkas on the market, that I didn’t know this business, and therefore I shouldn’t go for it,” Vega said in early March. He was speaking in front of boxes of Avorza vodka, requested by Miami liquor stores and restaurants as the Russia boycott took hold after the attack on Ukraine.

In mid-March, President Joe Biden banned the import of Russian vodka and caviar as one of the measures to put economic pressure on Russia. And this was the moment for vodkas not associated with Russia to shine.

One of those was Avorza, which Vega discovered four years ago on a trip to Europe. He later bought the formula.

A drink with a Miami flavor

After the first container of Avorza vodka, which arrived in Miami on March 1 and sold out in 48 hours, orders came in for three more containers, Vega said.

Avorza can now be found in South Florida restaurants, including Sushi Sake, Caffe Abbracci in Coral Gables, Carbone in Miami Beach, The Gramercy Miami, Shoma Bazaar in Doral, and in liquor stores Crown Wine & Spirits, Cutler Bay Wine & Liquor, Davie Liquor, Mega Wine & Spirits, and Jensen’s Liquors in several states.

“Gulf Liquors was the first store to order 100 cases. They told me that the bottle looked like other bottles, and when they tried it, they bought 600 bottles,” said Vega, grateful for the business.

In just one month, Avorza vodka has made its way beyond Florida and is already being sold in 27 states. It will also be at the ports of call of Norwegian Cruise Line, which has already ordered 3,000 boxes, Vega said.

In many cases, the customers happen to be friends. One of those is Angel Argüello, the founder of Sushi Sake, with more than a dozen restaurants in South Florida. They went to school together, and Vega used to buy him cassettes. Argüello was a DJ in high school.

“Now I have to charge you for the cassettes I bought you,” Vega said jokingly to Argüello, pointing out that $5 was a fortune at the time, especially for his father, a Firestone salesman who worked nearly 80 hours a week to support the family.

By observing the cars arriving at his father’s work, Vega decided that he would dedicate himself to customizing cars, which he has done with his own business since 2004.

“I think I have a gift for identifying the appropriate style for each person,” said Vega, who created his own brand of accessories, parts and wheel rims, and named it Avorza.

The name is a combination of the initials of his name and of everyone in his family, and the word “forza,” which in Italian means “strength and power” and also “the ability to face difficulties in life.” This was the part that most interested Vega, who had won a yearlong legal battle against an associate who tried to steal his business and his clients.

With the accounts frozen while the issue was in court, Vega started from scratch. His clients supported him. Some even sent him the cars he had already customized. And in less than a week he managed to earn $100,000 to create The Auto Firm.

The business, in which he has customized the cars of Marc Anthony, Luis Fonsi, Vin Diesel and Nick Jam, has led to friendships with athletes and celebrities. One of his most recent designs was printed on the new car of Dominican singer and dancer Yailin, girlfriend of Anuel AA.

From cars to vodka

Those who called Vega “crazy” didn’t know when he decided to embark on the world of vodkas that he “had found the secret formula and wanted to share it.”

“It is a pure, organic, vegan, gluten-free and kosher formula,” said Vega, explaining that Avorza differs from other vodkas by its smooth taste.

“It goes down your throat as if it were water,” he said. “The secret is that it is distilled many times, the process is respected, instead of rushing it to obtain more quantity,” he said, recalling that he’d tasted the vodka for the first time on one of his trips to Europe.

When he first tasted the smooth vodka, he thought it was mixed with water. But he was convinced that the vodka was pure when a racer, the inventor of the formula, climbed on top of his car after drinking it.

“This can’t be, because that car is worth millions of dollars, it has to be a real vodka,” Vega told himself.

But it didn’t occur to him to buy the formula from the racer until he was ambushed and shot by a hooded man in his driveway,

“When I feel like I’m bleeding to death, that I can’t breathe, in those minutes that you have left, I say to myself, ‘Am I going to leave like this? What will happen to my family? There is money in the company, I have properties, life insurance, but is that going to support my children and grandchildren?’ “

In the hospital, while drinking juice, he remembered the vodka that he had tasted in Germany. He invited the car racer to come to Miami to talk business. He bought the formula from him and set out to import Avorza, which now bears the name of the brand he originally created to customize cars.

Vega, who started working at age 14 cleaning pools in Miami, is optimistic about the future of his vodka.

“If in the car business, in which there are so many workshops, I took mine to the level of making it one of the largest in the United States,“ he said. “In the vodka business, in which there are so many brands with tradition, I don’t want to be better than them, but different.”

If you know a person whose story of personal and professional improvement could be reflected in this series of profiles from el Nuevo Herald, please contact smoreno@elnuevoherald.com or gguerra@miamiherald.com.

This story was originally published April 5, 2022 at 6:54 AM.