Alabama Just Made Its First Legal Whiskey in 100 Years

Alabama is probably not the first state you would say is ahead of the curve when it comes to trends. But when it came to Prohibition—the US Constitutional ban on the sale, production, and importation of alcoholic beverages, implemented nationwide in 1920—Alabama was in the fun-hating vanguard. Whiskey production in the state came to an early end in 1915, when local politicos ran the producers of Jack Daniels out of the state. One hundred sad, dry, whiskey-production-free years followed. Sure, you've been able to buy or drink whiskey since the repeal of Prohibition,, but there was no legally produced Alabaman whiskey made there—until now.

John Emerald Distilling Company, located in Opelika, Alabama, has released the first legal whiskey distilled in Alabama in a century. And you won't believe why it took so long.

Apparently, Alabama's liquor laws are so convoluted and complicated that no one dared to take a chance on making whiskey there—at least not state-sanctioned whiskey—even though Prohibition came to an end with the ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933. Seriously.

Jimmy Sharp, son of John and a co-owner of the John Emerald Distilling Company explains: "The way the laws are written, it's written and it's written over, and over-written, and over-written . . . it's real difficult to discern for the average person who doesn't speak legalese to understand you can [legally distill whiskey in the state]."

Apparently no one in Alabama has spoken this brand of "legalese" for 100 years. It took a sit-down with—and long explanation from—the head of enforcement for the Alcoholic Beverage Control in Alabama to convince the Sharps that they could distill whiskey there.

Jimmy Sharp says, "Initially, we didn't think we could have it ,but actually the head of enforcement for ABC was the guy that told us we could. He actually went and highlighted the laws, and said, 'Here's how you do it.'"

It took some mighty fine legal wrangling to make sense of the law: "It was like, you had to read this, you had to go over here and read this, and it kind of cryptically said, 'This is the exception to that,' and you have to go to G-4 over here to look. And you're like whoa, eight pages apart from each other, and it was tough to figure out."

Evidently, no one had tried to figure this all out before. But now that the law has been elucidated, several companies have begun the process of producing legal, 100-percent Alabaman whiskey.

But John Emerald Distilling Company got to market first. Their John's Alabama Single Malt Whiskey hit shelves in June.

Sure, in the rush to get their whiskey into stores as quickly as possible, the distillery may have taken a few shortcuts: "We use these small, five-gallon barrels as well as temperature control that helps simulate seasons and gives us a mature product in a short period of time. I believe others here trying in the state are using traditional techniques where they're just going to have to wait probably a minimum of three years," said Jimmy Sharp.

But it's the non-traditionalists who tend to make history, isn't it?

Jimmy Sharp is confident that with a little more aging, his product will get better and better. Still, life is good for the first Alabaman distillers in the 21st century. Sharp describes the rollout this summer: "People were buying it before we were trying to sell it, basically, which was good. We were happy with it then, but it will also get a lot better. We sell out of it constantly. The first four cases sold out in 45 minutes. Of course, there was some anticipation with that."

No surprise that the product launch was a success. Alabama, after all, has been waiting for homegrown whiskey for a very long time.