When Wofford College roommates Jake MacDowell and Justin Buchanan entered a business plan competition together in their senior year, they never seriously dreamed that they would be operating their own distillery less than two years later.
Though they didn’t win the competition, they did follow through on the micro- distillery idea. At rst, Jake and Justin assumed they’d be making bourbon. “When you talk about historical American spirits, that’s what everyone thinks of,” says Justin. “But we started digging around and found that the rst spirit in the colonies was rum. In colonial days, Charleston imported 130,000 gallons of rum a year.”
The more they learned, the more they became fascinated with the story of colonial rum. “Rum is a forgotten spirit,” adds Jake. “We were astounded to find out that distilling rum was second only to shipbuilding as an industry in the colonies.”
