By Betsey Dahlberg
LILBURN, Ga. | For those of you who have never heard this, Hope Springs Distillery is the first distillery to open in Gwinnett County since Prohibition. We are located in Old Town Lilburn on Railroad Avenue.
We currently make three products: Top Hat Vodka, Garner Creek Gin, and Illusion Absinthe. All of our products are distributed by Savannah Distributing Company and are available throughout the State of Georgia.
We started selling spirits in 2017. Like everyone else, the Pandemic caught us by surprise, and we had to close our tasting room in 2020. We started giving tastings and selling from our back door instead. In April of 2020, the federal government asked us to consider making hand sanitizer, since it was impossible to find sanitizer in stores.
The second weekend we were open to sell hand sanitizer, and we accidentally created the worst traffic jam in the history of Lilburn! We sold about 500 bottles of it in one day! We had to ask folks to leave and come back another day. We think the police have finally forgiven us for that traffic jam! We sold the sanitizer for the lowest price we could, and donated some to first responders as well. After about 12 weeks, the supply chain caught up, and we didn’t have any more demand for it. We ended up manufacturing and selling about 4,000 bottles of hand sanitizer.
The year 2021 was hard on us, as well as being hard on a lot of our bar and restaurant customers. Not only that, but lots of the festivals were canceled then. We were pleased to participate in the Atlanta Food and Wine Festival. Also, for the first time, we participated in the Georgia Trustees Wine and Spirits Competition. We won the Best in Georgia Award for both our Garner Creek Gin and our Illusion Absinthe.
We also met a very interesting guy, Armistead Wellford of Richmond, Va., who is the Great-Great-Great Nephew of Lilburn Trigg Meyers, for whom Lilburn is named. Mr. Meyers is the gentleman whose picture graces our labels for Top Hat Vodka. Our new buddy is a very interesting person, and he feels like a member of our family! We are hoping to see more of him here in Lilburn.
We are hoping that 2022 will be the year that the Pandemic eases up, and we are hoping to produce a few new products, and perhaps expand our distribution a bit. We are hoping that we will get to open a bigger tasting room soon as well.
Please feel free to come and visit as well, whether you have visited us before or not. It would be best to call first (770 861 6397), or check on our Facebook page or our Instagram account. After all, we promised the Lilburn Police Chief that we would not again invite everyone in Gwinnett County to visit us at the same time! Hope to see you soon.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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