Second distillery possible
Published 3:00 am Saturday, January 6, 2018
The Conecuh Ridge Distillery may not be the only distillery coming to Pike County soon.
Daren Hooks, the owner of Log Creek Distillery and Farm, will come before the Pike County Commission on Monday to request a spirits manufacturing, warehouse and wholesale liquor license.
“It’s a family tradition,” Hooks said. “The family has been doing it since before 1900. Every family up here has been in the whiskey business where we live. It’s a way of life for these families, although there’s not that many left that do it anymore … I can name 10 folks in my family that have been to the penitentiary for making whiskey.”
The application for the company lists the address as 1353 County Road 7768.
The whiskey, he says, will be called “Pike County White Lightning.” Hooks said the plan is for the business to serve as a bottling facility and warehouse in addition to the distillery.
“It’s like what you would see out in the woods,” Hooks said. “It will be a small-scale, family-run distillery. And it won’t cost the taxpayers anything. I don’t know what it’s going to do. I don’t got no corporate help and I don’t want none. If it makes it it’ll be on me and if it don’t it’ll be on me.”
The structure is listed as a one-story, 3,680 square-foot structure.
In September, the City of Troy announced that Conecuh Ridge Distillery, producer of Clyde May’s Alabama-style Whiskey, would be locating in Troy after the city offered up to $3 million in incentives to the company – including the purchase of the property.
County administrator Harry Sanders said the commission has not handled a license request of this nature in the 16 years he’s been in the position.
The public will have the opportunity to comment on the license application at the meeting of the Pike County Commission on Monday, January 8 at their 5:15 work session. The commission could vote on whether to allow or deny the license at their business meeting at 6 p.m.
The commission meets upstairs at the Pike County Health Department on South Franklin Drive.