North Carolina Bourbon Mystic Distillery Beats Out Well-Known Bottles From Kentucky | Eater Carolinas

"A farm-based Durham distillery opened in 2013 that has quickly earned national recognition for its bourbon, including Best Bourbon (up to 5 years) at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition and multiple gold medals (2021, 2022) plus a double gold in 2023 for its releases. The operation controls ingredient quality end-to-end—growing its own corn, rye, wheat and triticale, drawing water from an on-site aquifer (which proved drinkably perfect without treatment), and seasoning its own North Carolina oak to make barrels—because the founder believes the local climate and inputs produce superior spirits. Production emphasizes quality over quantity: an extra-long 13-day fermentation, two pot-still runs, and hand-cutting of distillate by smell and taste lead the team to discard more distillate than many competitors to ensure only the best liquid goes into bottle. Its Broken Oak Small Batch bourbon earned its name after being aged in leaky barrels (and replacement barrels that also leaked), a quirk that stuck after litigation with the cooperage; the brand bottles by barrel rather than by a single age statement and currently has a limited 24 barrels of that release left. The distillery is also pursuing a high-profile experiment for 2026—sending 10 barrels to orbit with the Exploration Company for a year, then offering ultra-premium bottles (priced at $75,000) that include a 50‑milliliter tasting sample, a fragment of a space‑flown barrel, launch and retrieval event access, and tracking of the barrel’s journey—part of a craft-minded approach summed up by the founder’s insistence that “we don’t want to put anything in the bottle that isn’t perfect.”" - Emily Price