Artisan Spirit: Fall 2020

Page 116

KEEPING NORTH CAROLINA’S

MUDDY RIVER DISTILLERY ROLLING

Left a good job in the city… Years ago, Robbie Delaney was on a return flight from his construction job in Texas to his home in Charlotte, North Carolina, when he read an inflight magazine article proclaiming that craft spirits in the US were going to be the Next. Big. Thing. That got the gears in his head turning. When he got home, he told Caroline, his girlfriend at the time (now wife) that he had an idea. Things moved quickly from there. “He found this old textile mill in Belmont (across the Catawba River from Charlotte), just 500 square feet,” Caroline recalled. “By November 2011, he found the space, filed the permits, and we got them back in January. It only took two months.” With a desire to make superior rum, a newly minted federal distilling permit, and

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a shiny 35-gal Craigslist still named Freedom, Robbie launched Muddy River Distillery. In the eight years since, the Delaney’s have expanded Muddy River into a 6,100 sq. ft. distillery, tasting room, and 140-barrel warehouse. Robbie now has three stills — 150-gallon Democracy, 200-gallon Liberty, and the 450-gallon semi-custom Independence — that he runs simultaneously producing around 1,200 bottles of rum a day. Caroline is still slightly shocked by the whole thing. “He saw the opportunity and went for it,” she smiled, “He thought something was going to stop him along the way somehow, like not getting the permit, but it all worked out.” “Ignorance got us here,” joked Robbie. “If

WRITTEN & PHOTOGR APHED BY CARRIE DOW

I had known everything then that I know now I might have talked myself out of it.” However, no one could have foreseen what would happen in 2020.

People on the river are happy to give… Muddy River made the switch to hand sanitizer early in the pandemic shutdown, selling bottles to the public and discounting or donating bulk containers to first responders. There isn’t a business in downtown Belmont where you can’t get a squirt of Muddy River sanitizer after making a transaction. It has kept them afloat, but there has also been a learning curve. “Our costs went up 60 percent,” Robbie noted. “Yeast is near impossible to find. To scale up the sanitizer has been intense. We went from distilling two days a week to seven days a week and for us we ferment three weeks in advance so I had to figure out how to ferment in two weeks. I came to work on March 28 and I haven’t left. But it’s better than a lot of businesses. We’re fortunate that we can work.” When asked why they didn't source alcohol for their sanitizer, Caroline provided a detailed explanation, "We got plenty of calls and emails from bigger companies selling alcohol and hand sanitizer so we did look into it. It was definitely cheaper.

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