Since Prohibition, state regulations had discouraged distillers from doing business in New York City. But in recent years, booze has taken on a new identity, not as a vice, but as a centuries-old farm product that creates jobs, revenue and tourism.

The State Liquor Authority in 2007, under Gov. Eliot Spitzer, introduced a $128 farm license that allowed manufacturers who used at least 75 percent New York State grain to produce small quantities of alcohol and sell it directly to customers at distilleries. That enabled people like Mr. Spoelman to create brand identities without spending money on ads or marketing, attaching their names to narratives and local vibes. At a meeting for beer, wine and spirits manufacturers in October, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo pledged $1 million to promote the industry, with an additional $2 million in advertising if the manufacturers contributed matching funds.

An industry was born. Since Kings County, 19 more liquor manufacturers have opened shop.

Brad Estabrooke was one of the first, with a company he called Breuckelen Distilling, from a name he had seen on a map in the old Williamsburg Bank in Brooklyn.

In 2008, on his 30th birthday, Mr. Estabrooke was laid off from his job as a bond trader at Deutsche Bank, a job he was happy to leave. “I was never a good bond trader,” he said at his distillery in Sunset Park. “My wife and I noticed other people in Brooklyn who started craft companies, like Mast Brothers Chocolate and Gorilla Coffee, who were making products from scratch. There was this thing happening, and we thought, that’d be great.” He chose the name Breuckelen, he said, because he “thought the name would look really good on a label.”

But does the world need gin or whiskey from Brooklyn, produced under economies of scale that mean it costs more than long-established commercial brands?

The craft beer movement, to which the new distillers are often compared, grew to fill a niche created by the major beer manufacturers, which were making what many saw as miserable brew; craft chocolate companies like Mast Brothers were seen as providing superior alternatives to Hershey’s. With spirits, however, even the craft distillers don’t claim to be filling a hole in the market.

“You’re absolutely right, I can’t argue with that,” Mr. Estabrooke said. “But at the same time, we’ve been able to put three spirits on the shelf that don’t taste like anything else out there.”