Instill Distilling

A cop, a lawyer, and an airman walk into a bar…sounds like the intro to a bad joke but it’s actually closer to reality than you think.

This entire InStill venture started with an affinity for wine. Tom, Eric, and Leigh all met and formed a friendship around wine, despite the vast differences between their individual walks of life. Eric and Leigh met over ten years ago while they were both serving in Special Operations together. They formed a friendship around pairing obscure meats with boutique wines between training and deployments.

After leaving the Army, Eric served as a Raleigh police officer while simultaneously studying for and eventually passing the arduous Certified Specialist of Wine exam. On weekends he began teaching wine classes at a local wine shop in Clayton, N.C. One of these classes is where he met Tom, a Clayton lawyer who was equally as passionate about wine and cuisine as Leigh and Eric.

The three cracked open a bottle of a wine-based spirit called grappa, sparking a conversation about the lack of a local craft distillery in Clayton. Their joint interests were immediately piqued, and InStill Distilling Company was born.