Pour performance: under the influence of strict state laws, spirits cannot flow as free as beer and wine.

• Author: Campbell, Spencer
• Position: State wide

Tim Ferris makes whiskey in the part of Rutherford County known as Golden Valley. To get to his distillery, visitors turn onto an obscure road outside Bostic and pass antique automobiles rusting in ramshackle wooden garages. Down this path and a slight hill stands the 6,000-square-foot edifice Ferris built to store equipment for his Defiant Marine Inc., an underwater-salvage company. It ended up not needing the space, so he bought a still from a local and taught himself how to make whiskey. While traveling the world--refloating vessels that ran aground in places such as Greenland and Italy--he came to appreciate single-malt whiskey, and he put his own twist on how to make it. "Barrels don't age whiskey well," Ferris tells two couples who made the trek today. He holds up three sticks that look like 2-foot-long wooden screws. "Vintners found a better way to get oak into the wine." The infusion spirals are more efficient than wooden barrels at giving whiskey a toasted-oak flavor, reducing the time it needs to age. They're why Defiant single malt went to market just two years after Ferris, 37, founded Blue Ridge Distilling Co. in 2010.

"This is nothing new in Golden Valley," one of the women says. "It's just legal now." Despite North Carolina's reputation for making illicit moonshine, anyone with the right permits can make liquor. The first legal distillery since Prohibition opened nearly a decade ago, and more than a dozen are now in the state. Defiant hit shelves in December 2012, and it's now available in North Carolina and nine other states. Ferris, a Connecticut native who moved to Rutherford County as a teenager, says it generates about $160,000 a month in sales. "We're profitable. By March 1, there's no way we're going to be able to keep up with demand." That's not stopping him from trying. He recently ordered two 2,000-liter stills to replace the 1,000-liter original and asked for a quote on a 5,000-liter one. He admits to playing "financial chicken" but sees a boom on the horizon. "Microdistilling is where microbrewing was 30 years ago." He means it's in a nascent stage of impending popularity, but he could be describing the regulatory journey distillers are just beginning.

"You want to try a little whiskey?" Ferris asks the visitors, who shout back, "Oh, yeah!" He pours Defiant into small, clear glasses that narrow near the rim. "It's an acquired taste," a woman says. "It's getting better the more I try it." Her husband disagrees--"I...