Alabama is predominantly known by three things. Barbecue, football, and history. But one father and son duo are looking to add something else to that list. APR’s MacKenzie Bates took a trip to the John Emerald Distillery in Opelika where history is being made, one barrel at a time.
It’s a quiet afternoon in the back room at the John Emerald Distillery. There are several large tanks filled with ingredients to make alcohol. Jimmy Sharp is making a batch of rum with a local flavor to it.
“So as much as we can in all of our products, we’re trying to use as many local ingredients and employ Alabama agriculture,” Jimmy says. “Our rum, we use cane syrup from Headland Alabama as one of the main ingredients.”
Jimmy and his father, John only got in to the booze business about three years ago. Their distillery makes rum and gin. But they only got the idea to add something to their product line-up about nine months ago which is making history.
We are making the first whiskey in the state of Alabama since 1915,” John says. “So it’s taken 100 years to get to this point.”
Well, the first legal bottle, anyway.
So why has it taken so long for Alabama to make Whiskey? It’s because it was against the law to make it due to Alabama’s liquor laws. After reviewing those regulations, The Sharps now produce the first legal bottle of whiskey in 100 years in the Yellowhammer State.
“By style, it’s called an American Single Malt,” John says. “And that’s really a new style in the United States to be honest with you. And we further make it an Alabama single malt by the way we treat it with our smoke.”
Alabama joined a dozen other states in saying it was illegal to produce and sell alcohol in 1915. Five years later, the 14th Amendment to the United States constitution was implemented nationwide.
“The South has an interesting relationship with alcohol,” Lisa Lundquist Dorr says.
Dorr is an associate professor of history at the University of Alabama.
“In many ways, I think southerners and booze have gone together for a long time that it has been a part of southern social culture,” Dorr says. “It is part of leisure and community activities to drink.”
The decision to prohibit alcohol did not sit well with some, which could have created a flowing revenue stream for the state.
“An interesting fact is that it drove one of the distillers out of the state at that point of time. He obviously had to leave. That distiller was a guy by the name of Lem Motlow who had a brand called Jack Daniels No. 7.”
Back in the distillery, the tanks are being cycled so they can put more of the recent batch of whiskey through the distilling process. It’s been a lot of trial and error for the Sharps. They released their first bottle of Whiskey in June. But the taste was not right.
It’s been a lot of trial and error for the Sharps. They released their first bottle of Whiskey in June. But the taste was not right.
“Every batch, we’re just pushing the age a little further. And just recently on batch eight now, where we’re at, we’ve said ‘ok, there’s the sweet spot.’”
Whiskey gets its flavor after aging over time in barrels, along with the ingredients used in the process.
“We use 100 percent malted barley,” John says. “Basically when we heat this up, doing a mash, it smells like heated grape nuts. So it’s a nice smell. And we’ll smoke with peach and pecan wood. Unlike say a scotch would be smoked with peat. So obviously fruit woods and other kinds of woods are a kinder, gentler smoke.”
After the mash, it goes through distilling process and it goes in to the barrels for aging.
While it could take some time to build their product up to the popularity with Jack Daniels, The Sharps are focused on creating a new legacy for Alabama Whiskey.
“Well certainly we do,” John says. “It’s good whiskey. The first thing we want to do is make quality whiskey. We want it to be a top-shelf product. And we want people to obviously enjoy it responsibly and like it. So that’s our goal, if you will. But in doing that, we’re making an Alabama whiskey. Because it is unique to Alabama.”
But it goes even further for Jimmy and John.
“And our Whiskey we made was an attempt to be an expression of our family history also in that it’s made like a scotch,” Jimmy says. “Our family is Scottish by decent but then it’s aged like a bourbon on fresh fully charred American White Oak. So it becomes some sort of a Hybrid between the two and the reflection of kind of our both American and Scottish roots.”
John Emerald’s single malt whiskey is in 42 stores across Alabama and Georgia. A single bottle sells for $42 and by all accounts, they’re flying off the shelves.
“We only just recently got to the point where we’re harvesting enough barrels to keep up with any kind of demand and even ask ABC to put us in more stores. Because in the stores we are putting it in, we’ve got some this week, we run out next week. We’re just now getting ahead. I hope we continue to run out.”
Now that they’ve figured out the right age for their whiskey, the next challenge is getting it in to the hands of a bigger audience.
“We’ve figured our product. We’ve made it. Now we’re trying to improve our skills of promoting and selling it. That’s the new hurdle to get over. We’re talking to distributors in other states. Probably going to wait until the New Year to really aggressively push in to getting in to more markets and just confirm that we’re handling the markets that we’re in right now.”
The tasting room opens at John Emerald. Auburn University students Jeffrey Moore and John Parkerson sit at the bar.
“The Liquor is fantastic,” Moore says. I guess I’ve tried all of them, maybe?”
Both order a shot of the locally distilled whiskey.
“Cheers to the John Emerald Distilling Company,” Parkerson says. “How bout it? War Eagle!”
“That’s some good stuff,” Moore says.
“Goes down smooth,” Parkerson says.