The long, scraggly gray beard is decidedly fake.
The worn straw hat and the fedora — a reference to today’s distiller, who wears many hats to get his products on the shelves — are clever theater. But they’re only props, Vann McCoy’s way of introducing you to Mayberry Spirits.
Most everything else about the distillery, on the periphery of downtown Mount Airy, North Carolina, is exceptionally real. From the items in the gift shop — hand-rolled cigars, soaps, baking extracts, jewelry — to the handmade chandeliers and wood and tin décor, repurposed from a 100-year-old barn.
Local, sustainable.
Owner and master distiller McCoy grew up in Mayberry. Where his father was a classmate of Andy Griffith. Where the iconic TV sheriff chased McCoy’s mother around the soda fountain.
At 16, McCoy left Mount Airy to study astrophysics.
But God — the Big “G,” McCoy says — had other plans.
“I ended up being a contemplative monk for 25 years.”
He returned to Mount Airy about three years ago to care for his mother.
“I saw where the wine industry had started to go in the Yadkin Valley and thought that with the craft brewing that was popular, craft distilling would come next.”
Moonshine — making it, drinking it — is ingrained in Appalachian culture. McCoy learned about it during an enrichment camp at a local university. He was 13.
“I found some corn meal under the cupboard, and I found some bread yeast over in the other cupboard, mixed it all up with some sugar and put it on the back porch. About a week later my mom comes home, walks in the door, and her pressure cooker is on the stove with some copper pipe puttied to it, going over into the kitchen sink … my condenser.”
Are you making liquor? she asked.
Yep.
She laughed out loud.
“’Your family’s been making it around here and running it for about 150 years,”’ McCoy says his she told him. “’You just can’t help it, can you?’”
On a recent Saturday afternoon, McCoy led a tour of the small distillery. He spoke with meticulous precision, but his indelible passion for making whiskey was impossible to miss.
Mayberry Spirits is a member of the N.C. Distillers Association and one of about 30 stops on the state’s Craft Distillers Trail, a partnership with the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. A distillery passport —much like the small booklet employed by the Kentucky Bourbon Trail — and a recently launched app are designed to promote North Carolina’s distilleries.
A North Carolina law, which Gov. Pat McCrory signed in October, allows the state’s distilleries to sell their products on site — one bottle per customer per year — as well as in ABC stores.
McCoy says the new law has helped boost sales.
“Yes, definitely. There’s no question there.”
Mayberry Spirits makes a 100-proof hand-crafted white whiskey, “Crystal Moon,” a hyper-aged “Toasted Oak” and an appropriately named vanilla-flavored “Toasted Vanilla.”
This whiskey — and I use that term generally in describing all three — is smooth and pleasant, without a hint of aftertaste.
You will taste neither corn nor rye. Neither barley nor wheat.
Because it’s not there. None of it.
McCoy’s whiskey is made with a sorghum syrup produced from gluten-free sorghum grain.
“It’s coming from the grain world, which means the final product is technically a whiskey,” McCoy says. But because the syrup is akin to both molasses and agave, the final clear, un-aged product is closer in taste profile to rum or tequila than, say, traditional corn whiskey. McCoy calls it a “Southern-craft changeup,” an alternative spirit to infuse drinks such as margaritas or daiquiris.
The Toasted Oak whiskey, for instance, smells of caramel, honey and molasses with a hint of the oak. There’s a subtle sweetness on the palate that builds toward a warm, unusually smooth finish. The 90-proof Toasted Vanilla — Toasted Oak blended with Madagascar vanilla — stands alone, says McCoy, as a “good sipping whiskey.” Mix it if you will because, as McCoy points out, “vanilla goes with everything.”
The distillery will celebrate its first anniversary in April, and the whiskey has already won gold and silver medals in a regional spirits competition.
Call it what you will. Characterize it how you will. It doesn’t matter. This stuff — like McCoy, like the town — is special.
People come to Mount Airy — Mayberry, if you prefer — to peek into an idealized past, a place where Barney Fife is made immortal via clocks and cardboard cutouts. Where Andy and Opie, fishing poles in hand, are always headed to the lake.
“We have a little more of a tour experience than most places do,” McCoy says. “We designed our company to include this because it’s Mayberry, and we wanted a fun experience for people.”
Labels on the distillery’s products — “RFD” means “Really Fine Drink” — play further on the Mayberry theme.
Visitors entering the distillery can’t help but see, stenciled on a far wall in large, prominent cursive, three unpretentious words that form a sentence both profound and eloquent: “Lift your spirit.”
Sound, simple advice. Exceptionally real.