Our State’s Made in NC Awards celebrate the talent and creativity of North Carolinians. Check out all of this year’s winners!
On a road trip with her husband, Lee, in 2013, Melissa Katrincic had a light bulb moment. She’d just been laid off and was transitioning from a 20-year career in marketing, and she felt compelled to start a business of her own. “As the miles wore on, Lee and I talked about what I should do next,” she says. “Then, it hit me.” Katrincic had grown up spending weekends with her grandparents. She had fond memories of watching her grandfather make nightly martinis, and the gin-soaked olives that he allowed Katrincic to taste. So in 2015, she launched Durham Distillery with Lee, whose background as a chemist gave him the perfect skill set for distilling. “We put our focus on making the highest-quality gin so that we set ourselves apart,” she says.
And that they did: Conniption Kinship is made with juniper, Indian coriander, cardamom, licorice root, angelica root, and bitter orange in the main pot still, then combined with honeysuckle flowers, fresh orange and lemon peel, and cucumbers cold-distilled into a “vodka.” The resulting blend delivers on flavor as much as it does on appearance. The color-changing gin is infused with butterfly pea flowers, giving it a bright indigo hue that shifts to blue and pink when mixed with citrus or tonic. “The purpose behind our gin was to connect art and science through the modernization of gin distillation,” she says. “This is a match made in heaven.”
Photography courtesy of Airlie Grove Juicery
As a little girl in Wilmington, Hallison Aktuglu woke up to fresh-pressed juice daily: “Everything was made from scratch in our home,” she says, “right down to the drinks.” In 2015, Aktuglu was diagnosed with breast cancer. As she went through treatments, she made juices packed with heavy greens for herself. She soon realized that the drinks made her feel more energized and helped her get through the treatments’ side effects. After being declared cancer-free, she began juicing more for friends and family. “It helped me through the worst time of my life,” she says. “I thought, ‘What if this could help someone else?’” Aktuglu started Airlie Grove Juicery five years later, creating cold-pressed juices like the Pineapple Ginger Wellness Shot, which strikes just the right balance between sweet and spicy.
instagram.com/airliegrovejuicery
Photography courtesy of Ginger’s Revenge Craft Brewery
David Ackley and Cristina Hall-Ackley had been spending a year abroad in Panama around the time they were introduced to alcoholic ginger beer, a fermented beverage with 18th-century origins. David, an avid home brewer, was committed to continuing his craft while living overseas. Getting ingredients like hops and malt wasn’t easy, but ginger beer only required ginger, sugar, and citrus juice to make. He began brewing a gallon at a time until he got the process down pat. The Ackleys later moved to Asheville, where they opened their brewery, Ginger’s Revenge, in 2017. In a circa-1950s facility in the River Arts District, the couple continues to experiment with a mix of light and bold flavors.
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