Longtime Triangle distillery closing this month. Here’s what we know.
TOPO Distillery, a sister company of Chapel Hill’s Top of the Hill Restaurant and Brewery, will officially close on Feb. 15, the Daily Tar Heel first reported. The company cited a sustained loss in revenue as the reason for closing.
The distillery opened in 2012 as the first locally sourced, organic distillery in the south.
Scott Maitland, founder and owner of Top of the Hill Restaurant and TOPO Distillery, has long been an advocate for the eat and shop local movement, which inspired his “grain to glass” distillery model.
“People want to know where what they’re eating and drinking comes from, and some people are very interested in keeping their money local,” Maitland told The News & Observer in 2015.
Maitland used locally sourced ingredients and supported state farmers. The organic ingredients for TOPO’s vodka, whiskey and gin were sourced from within 100 miles of Chapel Hill, he told The N&O then.
TOPO’s liquor was fermented by the distillery itself, making it stand out in the area, Maitland told DTH. Many other distilleries purchase alcohol from generic manufacturers.
“How you make money in the distilling business is [to] buy your alcohol from somebody else, and say it’s yours,” he told the UNC-Chapel Hill paper. “I refuse to do that.”
At the time of TOPO’s opening, distilleries weren’t allowed to sell liquor products directly to visitors, DTH reported. Maitland met with elected officials to push against that rule.
“My entire career in the distilling industry was changing the laws to make it so that distilleries could actually make a living,” Maitland told DTH.
Hand-crafted liquors no longer being made
TOPO Distillery’s equipment was bought in November, so they are no longer making any of their signature hand-crafted liquor, Maitland told The News & Observer on Thursday.
Some unbought bottles of spirits remain, which can be bought online and picked up at the distillery for one more week.
TOPO will no longer be in the building — located at 505 W. Franklin St. in Chapel Hill — as of Feb. 15. TOPO’s signature liquor can still be bought in ABC Stores across North Carolina until supplies run out.
“I am very proud of the products we made, and our legacy is teaching people what hand-crafted liquor can be,” Maitland said.
“When you drink our stuff, you can say, ‘Oh, I get why Russians drink this stuff neat. This doesn’t taste like rubbing alcohol.’ I feel like I’m moving through the seven stages of grief, and I’m feeling frustrated because the products we made were truly fantastic.”
Top of the Hill Restaurant & Brewery opened in downtown Chapel Hill in 1996 in an effort to keep businesses locally owned. TOPO Distillery opened in 2012 as the first locally sourced, organic distillery in the south.
For more on TOPO Restaurant & Brewery, including to make reservations, visit thetopofthehill.com.
Hand sanitizer sales
TOPO Distillery began turning unsold alcoholic beverages into hand sanitizer in spring 2020, donating half their bottles to first responders and selling the rest to community members, DTH reported.
They followed the World Health Organization’s recipe and began production after the Food and Drug Administration gave approval.
The revenue helped support the distillery and restaurant in the depth of the pandemic.
