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Best Distillery in the Triangle

Mystic Farm & Distillery

Indy: There are several excellent distilleries in the Triangle, but for the whiskey aficionado, there's one that's not to be missed: Sourced almost entirely from North Carolina ingredients and distilled on a solar-powered, twenty-two-acre farm in Durham, Mystic offers a booze-forward but not too harsh bourbon—the harshness is tempered by a hefty wheat bill—called Heart of Mystic that stands out both as a rugged base for any whiskey cocktail and neat (or with a splash of still water, or with a rock) in a glass. This is not to be confused with the first product Mystic brought to market, Mystic Bourbon Liqueur, which uses this bourbon as base for a honey-infused concoction. Nor should it be confused with Soul of Mystic, the unaged white lightning whiskey. Those are both fine, though the liqueur is a little too sweet for my liking. (If you cut it with straight bourbon, it becomes more palatable.) But the bourbon itself, aged in barrels for several years, is as good as, if not better than, any you'd find in Kentucky.

After all, as Jonathan Blitz (an attorney who cofounded Mystic) will tell you, before Prohibition, North Carolina had one of the best distilling scenes in the country. All of the ingredients are here: good water, good agriculture, seasonal changes that cause the barrels to expand and contract just like you want them to. After Prohibition and the decades of ridiculously restrictive alcohol laws that followed, we just need to catch up again. The more distilleries like Mystic that pop up, the quicker that'll happen. —Jeffrey C. Billman

Best Donut in the Triangle

Monuts