When the pandemic, legal red tape and triple the rent forced Andrew and Liz Porter to close their “Doc Porter’s” distillery in 2020, there was one last order of business to iron out: the whiskey. They still had barrels of perfectly good bourbon, rye and malt whiskey. All it needed was time and a place to age.
Five years proved the right amount of time, and Great Wagon Road Distillery became the perfect place to package 18,000 bottles of the best whiskey they’ve ever made. The Porters are calling it “Last Call” and celebrating it as a tribute to a joint passion project for a couple that met and fell in love in Charlotte.
The whiskey is available at select ABC Stores in Mecklenburg County and at Great Wagon Road Distillery.
“Once they're gone, it'll be like a beautiful thing we did back when,” Liz Porter says.
Andrew Porter, a native of New Jersey, took up craft beer making as a hobby with his father. While pursuing a chemical engineering degree at Clemson, he took a class on distilling. When he came to Charlotte in 2009 it was the beginning of the craft beer boom; that’s the year Olde Mecklenburg Brewing opened, followed by Birdsong the next year. He decided to forge a different path.
His soon-to-be wife, Liz, a graduate of Virginia Tech, was a marketing executive. Andrew was working as a consultant for what’s now Ramboll Engineering.
They married, and while continuing full-time careers, founded a side hustle in 2014 they called Doc Porter’s for Andrew’s grandfather. They sold their first bottle of bourbon in October 2015. For the next five years, while also having two daughters, they made spirits.
“There were times when I was pregnant or had an infant, and Andrew would be at the distillery,” Liz says. “He would go to work from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. He would go straight to the distillery, be there until 2 a.m., come home, sleep, rinse, repeat. It was a blur. But it was still fun.”
“And a little crazy,” Andrew says.
He was the distiller. She was the marketer, and together they carved out a corner of the North Carolina market.
“We have incredible agriculture, and telling that story was a huge part of the fabric of our brand,” says Liz. "Because we used no processed ethanol—grain-neutral spirits—we were completely grain to glass.”
They built relationships with a corn and wheat farmer in Marshville, a rye grain farmer in Eagle Springs and worked with two malt houses in the Asheville area. They came to understand what educated local bourbon enthusiasts knew already, that North Carolina used to outproduce Kentucky before prohibition because of the climate and agriculture here.
North Carolina had more than 400 distilleries, which was more than any other state, in the early 1900s. But in 1909, it became the first state to outlaw alcohol sales, 11 years before the nationwide ban. It would take 70 years before North Carolina legalized liquor production again and almost 100 before North Carolina opened another distillery, Piedmont Distillers, in 2005.
In a state where NASCAR originated from moonshine bootleggers trying to outrun police, and each other, liquor’s legal history is complicated. The Porters found that even in the 2010s, local laws prohibited distillery tour guests from buying more than one bottle of liquor per person, per year.
Just when legal restrictions began to loosen then came COVID, a new landlord and a rent hike.
““We couldn't continue,” Liz says. Family had to come first, so we decided to sunset it.”
The “Last Call” release has given them a chance to celebrate people they’ve embraced in the Charlotte community and feel some love in return.
“We hadn't done anything in almost five years, and we had an event in March,” Liz says. “We had a guy come up and say he drove from three hours away and got a hotel room to come. We had people showing us pictures of their wedding, where they had set up Doc Porter's blind tastings and had barrels. It was incredible.”
The Last Call is now a part of their legacy.
“We're closing the chapter in a way that we feel so proud of,” Liz says. “No regrets, we had the best time. This is a great ending, going out on products for Last Call. They're the best we've ever made.”
Last Call is available at Great Wagon Road Distilling NoDa and select Mecklenburg ABC Stores. For more information, go to DocPorters.com
Doc’s Fall Remedy
This special cocktail, created by Bob Peters, is available at Chief’s Modern Cocktail Parlor in NoDa.
INGREDIENTS
- 2 ounces Doc Porter’s bourbon
- .75 ounces of Cappeletti
- 1 ounce of cardamom brown sugar syrup
DIRECTIONS
- Stir
- Garnish with fresh pear