Proper approval and mere licenses are the only two roadblocks stopping the John Emerald Distilling Company from opening.
The father and son owner's, John and Jimmy Sharp, final approval for the distillery will be heard at the next Opelika Planning Commission meeting, Oct. 22. The distillery plans to open early 2014.
"John Emerald is my grandfather's first and middle name," said Jimmy Sharp, head distiller. "That's kind of the theme of our business, is all of the products are named after family members."
The distillery's signature products are John's Alabama Single Malt Whiskey, Hugh Wesley's Gin, Spurgeon's Rum and Gene's Spiced Rum.
All of the products are named after Sharp family members.
"The idea is making this product honoring our forefathers, or ancestors, if you will," Sharp said. "We are creating a tradition. There is not currently a tradition for Alabama whiskey. And so it's kind of like an open slate to be defined. We feel spirits can be a product that can be associated with the community and be part of the identity of the community."
Sharp owned a plaster company and after shutting down the company, Sharp and his father decided to open a distillery. Sharp said it is illegal to home distill, but is legal to home brew.
"They hear distillery and 'Oh, what kind of beer are you going to make?'" Sharp said. "It's not beer, it's different."
Craft distilling is often synonymous with micro-distilling, but Sharp said the latter is the preferred term by people in the industry.
Sharp said he plans to build a glass wall separating the stills from the public tasting area. That way, people can watch the process, but be behind glass.
"Craft distilling was at the same point craft breweries were 15 years ago," Sharp said. "We started going to school, did an internship in Scotland and went to some schools out West. We just got as much knowledge as we could."
Sharp said craft distilling implies a small operation most organizations define as producing less than 100,000 gallons per year.
Oct. 1, the City of Opelika approved craft distilleries, such as the John Emerald Distilling Company, may produce no more than 75,000 gallons annually.
"Everything is more hands on," Sharp said. "Even down to bottling, we bottle it by hand. There's no automated anything really, from start to finish it's a hands-on process."
The distillery will also operate a season simulator as a way around aging the whiskey for 10 years.
Sharp said a storage room will be heated for a week, left alone and cooled for a week to simulate the four seasons.
"I think the distillery is going to bring in a lot of tourism," Sharp said. "Every small distillery I've visited told us that they are bombarded by tourists. All of them, in the first six months, had to hire someone to deal with that. Bus loads came in to visit these places."
The distillery is located at 706 N. Railroad Ave. in the previous Railroad Art location.
"Our feature product is our single malt whiskey," Sharp said. "Basically because our family heritage goes back to Scotland and I've always enjoyed scotch myself."
Sharp said the Distillery will use as many Alabama products as they can.
A large portion of the sugar used in production will come from Alabama sugar cane.
"But we are going to smoke ours with local woods, predominately peach and pecan woods," Sharp said. "So to kind of give it more of a local flare, we are also making rum."
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