Opinion
Looking back while looking toward new year’s political battles
A 70-year-old text on political philosophy still teaches valuable lessons.
Opinion
Why North Carolina should modernize its ABC laws
The next time someone asks where to find exceptional American whiskey, I want the response to be the same our great-grandparents gave
News
U.S., U.K. to lift harmful tariffs on steel, spirits
The United States and United Kingdom are ending a host of costly tariffs, effective June 1, on a number of products, including whiskey. The deal allows historically based sustainable volumes of U.K. steel and aluminum products to enter the U.S. market without the application of Section 232 tariffs, the White House says in a news...
Opinion
Jefferson neighbors seek liberty
The travails of Albemarle County Baptists and other religious dissenters during the 1760s and 1770s had a strong impression on Thomas Jefferson.
Opinion
Remembering Leanne Powell: Distiller, creator, innovator, leader, friend
I met Leanne Powell on a searing hot June day in 2016, as I was writing “Still & Barrel.” She popped out of a newer-model Camaro — I can’t remember the color — dressed all in black. She wore a long skirt and a T-shirt with a lone white-on-black image and letters that read, simply,...
Opinion
Buffalo Trace, Blanton’s fiasco just one example of an 80-year-old problem
Buffalo Trace and Blanton’s are virtual unicorns for bourbon lovers living in North Carolina. Getting the chance to buy a bottle, particularly Blanton’s, in North Carolina is — using a movie reference — akin to finding a golden ticket in an oversized bar of chocolate. North Carolina gets products from the Buffalo Trace Distillery in...
Opinion
Enough is enough: It’s time to wake up and reform the way North Carolina controls liquor
It’s time to wake up, North Carolina. Enough is truly enough. In truth, it’s well past time lawmakers take substantive steps toward rewriting or eliminating much of the arcane laws governing alcohol, painfully documented in N.C. General Statute 18b. It runs nearly 150 pages and almost 70,000 words. So, let’s open that cracked and weathered...
News
New study shows bourbon industry has doubled economic impact for Kentucky
North Carolina lawmakers still wringing their hands over reforming the state’s archaic and draconian liquor-control system should look to Kentucky as an example of what a legislature can do to boost tourism, nurture entrepreneurship, and promote innovation. Ten years ago, the Kentucky Distillers Association says, leaders of that state’s signature bourbon and distilled spirits industry...
Opinion
Tariffs targeting China would hurt America’s native spirit, N.C. producers, consumers
The ill-advised and widely denounced tariff rhetoric coming from the White House has stressed manufacturers and upset the markets. The initial targets were steel and aluminum, specifically from China. The move apparently came from some misguided belief about current-day Andrew Carnegies making tracks to Pittsburgh to set up shiny new mills along the Monongahela and...
Opinion
N.C. treats distilleries differently from breweries, wineries, but why?
A friend of mine, who, along with a group of his friends, owns a distillery on the N.C. coast, once told me a story about a customer who asked him for a drink. I tell the story every time I have the opportunity. There’s a moral. The distillery, because of its location on the Atlantic,...
Opinion
Thomas Jefferson’s Baptist Neighbors
The Albemarle County Baptists thought they were entitled to religious freedom as a matter of right. The Virginia government thought otherwise.
