Going Clear: Artisanal Ice

Nestor Villalobos sits in a Detroit factory, watching a tangle of conveyor belts and nozzles once used to produce yogurt cups fill thousands of plastic six-packs with ultrapurified water. “It’s pretty awesome to watch this thing run,” he says, though he’s more excited about what comes next. Once the containers are popped in a freezer for four hours, they’re meant to produce 2-inch cubes that are perfectly square, slow-melting, and completely clear—the “holy grail of ice,” as Villalobos puts it.

The concept began to crystallize when, as a manager at tech company Systemax, he traveled to China in 2011 and was told having ice in his Johnny Walker Black would make him sick. Originally, Villalobos, 34, wanted to make sanitary ice. Then he began researching the industry and learned of Frederic Tudor, an early 1800s businessman who became obsessed with selling frozen water internationally from a pond at his Massachusetts home. Procuring cubes to cool drinks and preserve food was incredibly difficult at the time, a luxury limited to the rich.