Eastern North Carolina has a complicated relationship with distilled spirits.
Pitt County native Thomas Jordan Jarvis, governor from 1879-84, helped lead the state’s Prohibition movement. The first statewide referendum on banning booze in 1881 failed by a vote of 77-22 percent. But he and state temperance leaders continued until they secured a ban in 1908 — with 62 percent of voters going for the ban — making North Carolina the first state in the South to outlaw alcohol.
With federal Prohibition in place, a place called Buffalo City in Dare County churned out so much hooch it was dubbed the “moonshine capital” of the nation.
Mother Earth Brewing co-founder Stephen Hill said during Prohibition, Kinston had a dispensary near the current location of downtown restaurant Ginger 108. Because the Volstead Act allowed whiskey for medicinal uses, some states sold it out of legal dispensaries.
With national Prohibition repealed in 1933, the General Assembly gave counties the power to go wet in 1935. Lenoir County — and 17 other ENC counties — legalized the manufacture and sale of alcohol. It also put into play the government distribution of distilled spirits that became the current statewide Alcohol Beverage Control system.
Lenoir County Commissioners called a vote on July 6, 1935 and 74 percent of voters chose to get liquor flowing as 150 cases of spirits arrived in Kinston two weeks later.
And with the resurgence of craft distilleries in the state, Mother Earth Brewing is getting in on the action. Branding its liquor under the banner of Mother Earth Spirits, Hill said they plan to roll out their first products no later than Christmas.
Right now, however, experimentation is the name of the game.
“We’ve already started our first batch — we don’t have anything yet,” Hill said.
Head distiller Dan Feldman said plans are in the works to produce types of gin, grappa, rum and whiskey.
Feldman said he’s developed about 50 different botanically-infused types of gin, several of them stacked in glass jars in the window of the distillery.
Among them, he noted a Szechuan peppercorn style — spicy and peppery, as the name suggests — and a chipotle-infused version that produces an aroma blending the smoky pepper surprisingly well with the traditional gin hints of juniper.
“The gin that we make will use all of the old world techniques,” Feldman said. “So, we’re going to put juniper in the still, and run the vapor over the juniper, like London dry gin, but we’re also going to macerate herbs, and we’re also going to cold-infuse on top of that.
“So, it’s going to be like a blend of all three techniques, instead of just choosing one or the other.”
For the grappa, an Italian-style brandy liquor made from distilling grape seeds, skins and stems (called pomace) — which tastes nothing like brandy — Feldman said they’re still searching for a winery with which to partner. They’re looking at facilities in Chilton and Yadkinville.
Interestingly, the term “grappa” is protected by the European Union to only cover that type of clear spirit made in Italy, San Marino and Italian-speaking parts of Switzerland.
In the United States, however, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau requires grappa-type spirits to carry the label.
“Even though, yes, grappa is claimed as a protected alcohol named for Italian beverages the same as sambuca is, champagne or Bordeaux, at some point those become generic terms for some types of alcohol,” Feldman said. “It’s not like anyone’s trademarked the name ‘moonshine.’ And the TTB says if I make it out of skins and seeds, it’s got to be called grappa.”
For the whiskey, Mother Earth is going with a 100 percent barley malt product.
“We played with a wheat whiskey — a soft, red wheat — and a corn whiskey, but I think what we’re going to end up doing is 100 percent malt,” Feldman said. “It’s got the richest flavor, from the experiments that we’ve done. It seems to be something that’s not done that much right now.”
Currently, they’re putting the whiskey in 5-gallon oak barrels with grooves on the inside to provide for more surface-area contact with the alcohol, speeding up maturation from five years to five months, allowing for quicker sampling.
Once Mother Earth decides on a style and it’s approved by the TTB, the whiskey will go into larger barrels to age for the full four-to-five years. The federal bureau’s approval process is backed up, Feldman said, because of budget cuts forced by sequestration.
On its website, the TTB lists an averaging processing time of 33 days for distilled spirits, but notes it legally can take up to 90 days to approve or reject an application.
Rum is one product that doesn’t have to be pre-approved, as long as it’s made from 100 percent sugar cane, and Feldman said they’ll likely produce a “traditional Caribbean golden rum.”
The distillery has been in the works for some time.
“We’ve been working on this for months,” Hill said, adding, “We’re also the first distillery to be in a LEED-certified building.”
No matter what’s visible in the bottle, there’s a case to be made for calling each product green.
Our still runs on solar hot water,” co-founder Trent Mooring said, “so we’ll be the first distillery to actually make spirits made with hot water made by the sun.”
Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 and Wes.Wolfe@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.
Time from distilling to ready to bottle for Mother Earth Spirits:
Gin, none
Grappa, none
Rum, 1 month
Whiskey, 4-5 years