The General Assembly Might Turn Every N.C. Distillery Into a Cocktail Bar

Gentry Lassiter is ready.

Soon, he’ll pry apart the handmade pallet-board counter at his Knightdale rum distillery and overhaul the front room from a bare-bones retail space into a cozy lounge. The home of Lassiter Distilling Company will, almost overnight, become more than a distillery. It will become a cocktail bar.

If a bill making its way through the General Assembly becomes law, the same could soon happen at every other distillery in North Carolina. They would no longer be cavernous warehouses where booze tourists gawk at large metal vats and take communion-sized sips of room-temperature spirits. Just like the state’s breweries, liquor-makers would have a place to showcase their products—and for the state’s burgeoning craft spirits industry, that would be a game-changer.

“Our business model will change fairly dramatically,” Lassiter says. “Right now, we’re primarily a tour location and an attraction, not really a hangout spot. We’d like to change that.”

As the INDY reported in February, distillers have been pushing back against North Carolina’s liquor regulations, which restrict on-site sales to five bottles per year—until recently, the limit was one bottle per year—and, under a rule the ABC Commission began enforcing this year, force distillers to reach a certain sales threshold to hold their place in state’s warehouse, making it more difficult for smaller distillers to gain a foothold in the market.

Read more: https://indyweek.com/news/northcarolina/general-assembly-sb290-nc-distillery-cocktail-bar/