Boundary Ave. — Blog — Pens and Gin

Liquor in North Carolina is sold in state-run stores controlled by local Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) Boards. There are about 170 ABC Boards in the 100 counties, and local distillers have to market their products to each board individually. While legally, 10% of the stock in each store must be from North Carolina, boards in less affluent areas are understandably reticent about carrying expensive craft spirits with little name recognition. In some counties, especially, particular local products can be frustratingly difficult to find.

In September of 2019, however, changes to the liquor laws made it possible for ABC Store patrons to special-order single bottles of local products, rather than the case lots required previously. When Lazarus and I found this out in mid-October, we excitedly made a list of products we wanted to try, and settled on three for our first special order: Pinetop’s Carolina Gin, Oak and Grist’s Dark Rhythm Gin, and Warehouse Distillery’s Boundary Street Bourbon.

The clerk at our local store was less than enthusiastic. After advising sourly that we could simply drive to the distilleries where, with the new laws, we could buy as much as we wanted, she went to get the manager. He assured me that I could indeed order single bottles, and even though I already had the state product codes from the distilleries’ websites, he retrieved his catalog to look them up again. He then took down the codes, along with my name and phone number, on the back of a brown paper bag and assured me he’d call as soon as they came in. I had assumed there would be an order form to fill out, and was a little nervous about the paper bag, but we all have our own ways of doing business, and I didn’t want to make a bad impression. Lazarus was grinning all the way home.

After a month, Lazarus and I were still waiting for the call, and began to wonder if the paper bag had indeed been misplaced. Back at the store, we didn’t find the bottles on the shelf, so I went to ask the clerk if she knew anything about the order. At first, she assumed I was talking about a case of Buffalo Trace bourbon that had arrived earlier in the day. A lot of other people had apparently already asked about it, and she looked a little harried. As I described the products we had actually ordered, the manager’s voice suddenly came from the office. “Oh, is it that guy?” he asked sharply. “Tell him I’ll call as soon as they come in!” Disappointed, by not wishing to add to their problems, we beat a hasty retreat.

December came and went, and we elected not to pester the staff during the holidays. On a clear day in the second week of January, Lazarus looked wistfully out over the back yard and sighed, “I guess we can order the bottles, boss, but that doesn’t mean we’ll get them.”

“Well… Pinetop is in Raleigh, and Oak and Grist are in Black Mountain,” I mused, “those are farther away than I can go this week - but Warehouse is in Newton, which is just past Stateville… we might be able to pull that off.”

Lazarus perked up. “Really?”

I looked over my calendar. “Let’s shoot for Tuesday.”

When we set out, mid-morning on Tuesday, it was raining. As a Washington State native, I don’t mind the rain. In fact, as we drove West and my thoughts started to drift, the podcast playing over the speakers began to seem too distracting. I turned it off so I could listen to the rain instead.

There is something fascinating about persistent rain: I tried to imagine what the volume of water would be if I were to collect all the rain that fell on the car in the hour or so it would take to get to Newton, and then multiply that by the square miles of country outside. It was a lot of water. Speeding through such a flood while remaining perfectly dry heightened the sense of driving, not just out of the Piedmont Triad, but out of reality as we understand it. The clouds of spray behind the big rigs blurred the boundaries of the road, the shoulder, the horizon… I heard a voice is the distance. It asked…

“Are you still with me, boss?”

It was Lazarus, who had awoken.

“Yes, yes…” I answered, “I’m here.”

“Everything OK?”

“Oh, yes… even with the rain, it’s an easy drive.”

According to the city’s website, “Newton’s average annual temperature is 57 degrees, with a range of 41 degrees in January to 77 degrees in July.” If this is actually the case, I’d be strongly tempted to move there. My hometown had a similar climate, and I despise the hot, humid summer months in the Triad. It is unlikely, though, I mused, that there’s much call for someone in my line of work.

Be that as it may, the weather in North Carolina travels from West to East, and by the time we reached Statesville, the rain had largely moved past us. When we took the exit for Rock Barn Road, it was not raining at all. We drove lazily through Conover, Newton’s sister to the North, and eventually took a left on Northwest Boulevard. Soon, Lazarus was tugging at my sleeve excitedly:

“Boss! Look!”

The sign said, “Boundary Street.”

“Makes it feel more real, doesn’t it?”

We arrived shortly afterward, and I chuckled to myself. They weren’t kidding: the Warehouse Distillery… was in a warehouse.

The story of the distillery is a delightful testament to vision and creativity. It is a family business, consisting of Ron and Stephanie Setzer, and their daughters, Baillie and Andie. Andie wrote the plan and created the business in 2015; with her mother, she runs the business side. Baillie and her father do the creative work in the distillery. The latter two happened to be on the floor, cooking mash when we arrived.

The building was spacious, elegant, and scrupulously clean. Passion, creativity, and confidence radiated from Baillie as she showed us around. They had built the facility themselves, virtually from top to bottom, themselves, and she eagerly described plans for upgrading the serving space, replacing the garage door with large windows, and so forth. The stills lined the back wall, shining like fine works of art. We were especially delighted to hear the smaller one in the corner was reserved for an upcoming gin release.

We Lazarus poked me and said, “you’re either going to have to wait to draw this place or come back and do it again!”

I grinned. “We’ll have to come back anyway for the gin.”

When it was time for the tasting, Baillie started us off with the Boundary Street Bourbon we had tried to order three months earlier. There was a look of wonder in Lazarus’s eyes as he held the glass, and he took his time inhaling the aroma. After the first sip, we looked at each other for a moment.

“There’s something about this,” I started, “I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s exceptionally well-balanced…”

Lazarus was grinning so broadly that I could see nearly all of his fifty teeth.

“Well, boss, this is a perfect example of what we were talking about last time. Who were those guys you had over? … the Shoes and Natori?”

“Deleuze and Guattari.”

“Yes: those two. Anyway, they were suggesting that bourbon was not a single thing, but a range, right?”

“Sure, if I understood them right, I think they would call bourbon a ‘molar multiplicity.’”

Lazarus frowned for a moment. “... well, I wouldn’t know about that… but remember the map! This bourbon is a perfect example of ‘what else’ bourbon can be, and they did it, in part, by adjusting the mash bill. Here… this might make it clearer.”

He quickly sketched a stacked column chart on a napkin:

What we have here is comparable to the Southern Star mash bill: corn (of course), rye, and barley - the proportions are different, however. Notably, the barley comprises 20%. That’s very high. I mean, it’s obviously much higher than the 4% of Southern Star, but even most commercial brands typically have only 10-14%, with 12% being fairly common. Knob Creek and Elijah Craig, for example, have similar mash bills, with about 12% barley and maybe 10% rye. Again, it’s more complicated than that…”

“It’s always more complicated than that…”

Lazarus chuckled. “Indeed, but, as you noticed, a high barley mash creates an entirely different flavor profile.”

I took another sip. “Now that you’re saying that, I can really see it. The spiciness of the rye and the sort-of vanilla note of the barley are there for sure. They blend with the corn, but remain individually discernible.”

“Want to see something even cooler? Check this out…”

Lazarus dropped an ice cube into the glass.

“Whoa! It’s totally different! It’s like … more savory, maybe? The flavor got a lot darker somehow, like it has more of a bass note.”

Lazarus chucked again. “We’ll make a taster out of you yet, boss!”

Boundary Street Rye had a similar sophistication. The rye spiciness was there, certainly, but again, the flavor was unique. As I thought about this, Lazarus was already scratching out another set of stacked columns:

Somehow, Knob/Turkey is in the middle now…

“Several ryes are 100%, like Broad Branch’s Rye Fidelity,” he explained, “or nearly so, like Bulliet Rye. As you can see, Bulliet has just a touch of barley to fill out the flavor. Most commercial ryes that aren’t 100%, however, use a generous percentage of corn to provide a balancing sweetness. Both the Knob Creek and Wild Turkey ryes, for example, are about half rye, with 35% or so corn and about 10-12% barley. This might make it easier for bourbon drinkers to appreciate…”

“It probably doesn’t hurt, I followed that path.”

“It’s a good way to go, for sure, but what they’ve done here with Boundary Street is pretty cool: no corn at all, a high barley percentage, and an equal amount of wheat to balance.”

“Right! Yes! The sweetness isn’t the corny flavor at all, but the butterscotch of the wheat! … and there’s the barley note, sort-of on the bottom.”

“Slick!” Lazarus exulted, “a wheated rye!”

The last product was the Boundary Street Maple. I am not wild about maple-flavored whiskeys, but this one avoids the overpowering, sickly sweetness of some of the other, big-label products. Baillie smiled and explained that this is because they use actual maple syrup from Virginia to get the flavor. Lazarus, who likes the sweet stuff, was savoring his with a beatific expression.

When it was time to go, Lazarus claimed on my back sleepily, and was already snoring in my ear by the time we got back to the car. He slept soundly until we stopped just outside of Statesville for lunch at the Boxcar Grille. The waitress didn’t exactly recommend the daily special, a catfish sandwich, since she didn’t eat fish, but she did tell us that people typically drove for miles to get it. On that recommendation, I ordered it. She came back shortly afterward to deliver two sweet and buttery breadsticks, and used a form of the “Southern Reflexive Verb” that I had never heard before: “Here’s-you some bread.”

Lazarus munched on the bread thoughtfully and mused, “I don’t get it, boss. Warehouse is everything anybody could ask for: creative, empowering, entrepreneurial, a local business... and they have some really terrific products! Why can’t they get more support from the ABC Boards?”

“I have no idea. Maybe it’s about vision: the way to sell a local product, you would think, is to sell it - talk it up, recommend it to patrons, tell the story. I’m sure it’s more complicated than that…”

Lazarus giggled: “It’s always more complicated than that…”

“But they don’t; at least, they haven’t when I’ve been in the stores. Surely, the whole burden of marketing can’t fall on the distillery! It’s a little ridiculous to take the position that you won’t stock something because no one’s heard of it: how are they supposed to hear about it? Similarly, just putting a bunch of bottles on a shelf and waiting for someone to find them isn’t really selling anything. If you don’t push a product and it doesn’t move, can you really blame the product? Particularly in a country where people would buy tablets made of fireplace ashes if someone suggested they promoted weight loss.”

“Drink your way to that Summer Body?”

“I’m probably speaking out of turn. I couldn’t sell water in the desert. Our waitress, however, sold me something she doesn’t eat herself.”

“You are a sucker.”

Of course, I am, but the catfish sandwich was fantastic.

As we returned to the car after paying the bill, Lazarus said, impishly, ¨Say, boss… since we're going back through Statesville anyway...¨

¨You read my mind. Let´s see how our friends at Southern are doing...¨