Last Thursday, Grand Traverse Distillery opened its first-ever tasting room in Suttons Bay. In the coming weeks, the business will also reopen its Leland shop, now in a new location. The expansion is a big bet on Leelanau County in the midst of shrinking market share for most alcohol-related businesses. And as Grand Traverse Distillery leaders tell the story, it all happened by accident.

“We've been in Leland for a long time; I think it's been 15 years that we've spent there, in multiple different stalls in that same building,” says Marketing Director Claire Moen. She’s referring to the 110 North Lake Street retail building in downtown Leland that has become a lightning rod for controversy due to a youth Christian ministry opening its doors in the space most recently occupied by Grand Traverse Distillery. Distillery owners closed up shop there last fall, assuming their chapter in Leland was over.

“Obviously, changes happened, and we needed to vacate because our lease came to an end,” Moen says. “We knew we loved being in Leelanau Peninsula, and loved being in Leland, but we also know that Leland has very little space available. So, when our space went away, we figured, ‘Well, we want to stay in this area. We do great business up there, we love it, and we've got a really good staff in that area. What else can we find in Leelanau?’”

According to Chief Financial Officer Joe Kolar, it was Grand Traverse Distillery’s Leelanau staff that ultimately found a replacement space: 321 North St. Joseph Street in Suttons Bay in the suite previously occupied by HomeTown Pharmacy. The distillery signed a lease in early August and started preparations to relocate its Leelanau presenceto Suttons Bay.

“Then, literally two weeks later, we found out we were able to get a spot back in Leland,” Kolar laughs.

“We said yes instantly,” adds Steven Rabish, Grand Traverse Distillery’s operations director. “And then the immediate feeling was, ‘Oh crap, I guess we’ve got two [Leelanau locations] now.”

While having two Leelanau shops wasn’t exactly in the plans, the Grand Traverse Distillery team is excited at the prospect of growing its footprint in the county.

“The positioning actually works out great, because not everyone that goes to Leland will come back to Suttons Bay, and vice versa,” Kolar notes. “They’re on opposite sides of the peninsula, and while they’re only about 10 miles apart, they feel a lot farther.”

Moen says the different identities of the two towns lend themselves to different types of tasting rooms.

“Leland, just being much smaller and having so many tourists in the summertime, has a different feel. We find that Suttons Bay has a little bit more of a local presence,” she tells The Ticker. “So, the Suttons spot, specifically for the summer, we're just doing tastings and bottle sales. We want to get a feel for that market and the foot traffic there. And then our plan in the fall, when things start calming down a little bit, is to start introducing cocktails. We want that to be a place where locals can come in after work and have a drink before going to dinner or heading home.”

The Leland spot, meanwhile, will be a more full-fledged tasting room from the start, in a space Moen describes as “bigger and better and brighter” than the stall Grand Traverse Distillery vacated last fall.

Another differentiator for each tasting room? A partnership with a very localized nonprofit.

“Last year, we started a single-barrel program, where each tasting room partners with a local nonprofit and they get to select their own single barrel of whiskey,” Kolar explains. “Then, as that whiskey sells, we donate a portion of the proceeds to that nonprofit.

In the whiskey world, single-barrel varieties are sought after because they’ve been bottled from one barrel rather than blended from several. While blending allows distilleries to achieve flavor consistency across multiple batches, single-barrel whiskeys can take on unique and distinct flavor characteristics. Single-barrel whiskeys are also bottled at cask strength, meaning they haven’t been diluted with water before going in the bottle.

In Leland, the single barrel program partner will be Fishtown Preservation Society, which recently selected a barrel of “8+ year Ole George Rye that has beautiful notes of caramel, spice, and an earthy charred oak finish.” The Suttons Bay tasting room partner is the Inland Seas Education Association, which chose a 4.5-year bourbon made from an unusual blue and white corn grain mash.

The nonprofit partners will also change going forward.

“We try to rotate them around, depending on how things go every year, just to spread the love,” Kolar says. “We’re trying to ingrain ourselves in these communities, because we all live here in northern Michigan, we work here, we buy our ingredients from here, and so the more we can give back, the better.”

Pictured: Last week's ribbon cutting ceremony at the new Grand Traverse Distillery tasting room.