Want a taste? The Rock Hill region’s newest distillery will offer tours — and rum
You would be hard-pressed to find anyone in Rock Hill who has not seen the tiny brick building downtown, tucked behind Marshall Piano Company. It’s the old cotton grading office on Southern Street.
Black letters on the building spell the simple word “cotton,” in reference to the Williams-Bynum Cotton Office, a name too long to neatly fit on what then was a roughly 800-square-foot structure, built in 1938.
In the future, the building will be known for another rather simple word: rum.
William and Patrick Bradner, brothers from Fort Mill, will open Sleeping Giant Distillery by the end of the year. They’ll produce the rum.
The brothers say it’s the first legal distillery in York County since prohibition -- a century ago.
A search of the region revealed four other distilleries in Charlotte and one in Belmont, N.C., according to the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission.
Things got started for William Bradner on Christmas Day, eight years ago when his wife, Julianne, bought him a beer-making kit.
“I tried it out and made it, and was like ‘hey this is fun, you know maybe I could do this for a living,’” the 34-year-old said.
There already were breweries, and whiskey and bourbon distilleries. The brothers wanted to be a little different. Distilling rum was an easy choice for a small, family-owned business, said William Bradner, who leads the operation.
“We think (rum) has lots of qualities to it that you can use for mixed drinks,” he said. “I think it’s just a versatile product that everyone can enjoy.”
Two products they plan to produce are a lemongrass-and-vanilla rum liqueur, which will be on the sweeter side, and a coffee-flavored rum. The Bradners will use roasted coffee beans from Knowledge Perk, a local roaster and coffee shop.
“We want to make sure that not all of the products we carry are really strong and punchy,” William said. “We want to be on a spectrum. We want some sweet, semi-sweet and some really strong, heavy hitters.”
Location has history
In contemplating their business, the Bradners chose Rock Hill, specifically the downtown area.
The small cotton grading office and the larger warehouse next door were up for grabs. The warehouse initially was a farmers’ cooperative where families took produce to sell in the early 1900s. E. Les Williams took ownership of the cooperative in the 1920s and formed Williams Cotton Co. It passed through three generations of Williams’ children, according to a 2008 article published in The Herald.
Now it is back in a family’s hands,
It took the Bradners more than a year to decide on the cotton grading office because they knew it would need extensive work to meet building codes with all of the equipment.
The Bradners needed a big enough space to house two large fermentators and an area to distill and bottle the rum. The cotton grading office was too small, so they expanded by 400 square feet in the back, while preserving many of the building’s historical features.
They reused brick from a wall they moved and the ceiling was restored. The old chimneys are still intact.
“It’s cool to be a part of the history of Rock Hill and I’m glad that we were able to keep some of this alive and still be able to use it how we needed to,” William Bradner said.
The Bradners named the company Sleeping Giant Distillery after a video game the two boys played as kids.
“And then it kind of became a multi thing, I guess because it took so long to open, it feels kind of like a giant of a task to complete,” Bradner said.
You can only taste test the rum
Don’t call this place a bar. It’s a tasting room.
South Carolina law that dictates how a distillery must operate, doesn’t allow the business to operate like a typical bar, which would serve drinks. If you want to taste the rum, you must tour the building.
The Bradners said they love the experience of going to a winery and talking to people about the product and how it’s made and the different varieties offered, William said.
“And so we kind of want to bring that kind of style to the distillery in terms of that,” William said. “We kind of wanted a winery-esq experience.”
You can taste test the rum. Patrons will get a half-ounce from each of the types of rum. After that, you can purchase a bottle of rum. The spirits will cost at least $20 a bottle.
The brothers will pay nearly $3 a bottle in state and federal taxes on each bottle of rum that is sold.
South Carolina law states “It is unlawful for a person in this State to manufacture, sell, give, or have in his possession a distillery” without a license.
The Bradners have completed the regulatory requirements to operate the distillery. They must meet city requirements, and are required to have a state micro distillery license, a federal distillery license and a retail license.
The building is designed to be explosion proof, all the way down to the lights and switches, because the alcohol percentage is very high and the equipment can easily catch fire, William said.
“All of those things have their own caveats,” Bradner said. “So it was daunting to say the least.”
And then there were delays in opening due to COVID. The opening date was pushed back six months.
People are interested
So far, there’s a lot of interest from passers-by who stop to inquire. There has been interest from ABC stores, restaurants and even hotel bars, William said.
Some local breweries have shown interest in obtaining barrels the distillery uses to age the rum, which can stay in a barrel up to a year. The breweries would use the barrels to give their beer a rum-type accent.
“So we’re going to go a little funky with some of our aging,” Bradner said. “Essentially what happens is we age our product and then once we’re done with the barrel, they (breweries) can have the actual barrel itself. And so some of those rum notes that are in the barrel will come out into the beer itself.”
Though he is fairly new in the distillery business, William describes his education as all over the place. He holds two associate degrees in engineering from York Technical College. After doing an internship in engineering, he decided he did not like it. He went back to school and earned a bachelor of science degree in environmental science.
“I’m not sure where distilling came from,” he said. “Maybe there’s a little bit of chemistry and engineering evolved…maybe it’s just like a hodgepodge of everything I’ve learned just kind of thrown together.”
While he plans on staying in the historic cotton building, he said if the business takes off, he is open to expanding.
“We just kind of grew up in the Rock Hill area and I knew Rock Hill has a lot of potential that is untapped,” William said. “And I think people are now starting to see that there’s potential there.”
