In this episode of The Best of Johnston County Podcast, we chat with Jeremy Norris, owner of Broadslab Distillery. Discover how Jeremy turned a family farm into a thriving distillery, creating unique bourbons and ryes. Learn about the history, the distillation process, and how the distillery is a local agritourism hotspot. Plus, hear about the beautiful venue for weddings and events, and why Jeremy loves Johnston County. 

Tune in for an engaging and educational listen!

Jeremy Norris: There is some row crop or some production farmland on the 125 acres. There's a lot other stuff on the front 125 acres, such as timber, the venue, parking lots, different things. But we also leased some farms in the community.

Everything we tends within a mile and a half of our location. And basically, anything that we tend it's not there on the farms, it's out right out the back gate or so. But we tend about a hundred and twenty acres and we grow corn, we grow rye, barley and rotate out with soybeans. Everything that we use at the distillery except for the soybeans are for rotation.

We sell those on the grain market. And sometimes, we sell excess grain if we have a really good year but most of what we use there for the distillery the corn, rye and barley.

Jonathan Breeden: Hello and welcome to another edition of The Best of Johnston County podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Breeden. And today, we have a special guest with us, Jeremy Norris, owner of Broadslab Distillery, between Benson and Meadow in Johnston County. And if you've not been there, it is a fascinating place, it's a beautiful venue. We're going to talk a little bit about how he got into the distillery business.

I think, you will find it very entertaining and educational. I know, I've learned a ton in the time we've been doing this. So welcome Jeremy. So anyway, let's start with, tell me your name and what you do?

This was before Interstate 40 was built. Johnston County has changed a lot in my lifetime. Back then, before Interstate 40, 50 was the route to the beach and you had all your beach traffic going by going to the beach. And actually that's what made our business viable, is the tourist traffic coming through and we sold them watermelons, cantaloupes, corn, tomatoes, okra, cucumber, everything you can think of in the produce lineup.

Jonathan Breeden: I think it was around '92.

Jeremy Norris: Was it '92?

Jonathan Breeden: I think it was around '92. Yeah.

Jeremy Norris: I knew it was in the late 80s or early 90s.

Jonathan Breeden: I think it was, and they finally finished it.

And so as I got older, I started looking into, what can we do with this farm to stay engaged in agriculture on a small scale and make it viable again? And so that's how we founded and started the distillery.

Jonathan Breeden: So, how big a farm is it?

Jonathan Breeden: Oh my goodness.

Jeremy Norris: That farm used to be a 400 and some few odd acres. And through the generations, it got cut up and dwindled down. I've actually bought some of it back over the years. So, we're up to 125 acres there on that piece of land.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay and so, what do y'all grow on the 125 acres? Or how much of it is actually been grown? I mean, you have the buildings.

Everything we tends within a mile and a half of our location. And basically, anything that we tend it's not there on the farms, it's out right out the back gate or so. But we tend about a hundred and twenty acres and we grow corn, we grow rye, barley and rotate out with soybeans. Everything that we use at the distillery except for the soybeans are for rotation.

We sell those on the grain market. And sometimes, we sell excess grain if we have a really good year but most of what we use there for the distillery the corn, rye and barley.

Jonathan Breeden: So, have you always done corn, rye and barley? Or was that a new thing when you decided to get into the distillery business?

We've got different equipment, little bigger equipment. We started on it probably, about 14, 15 years ago. And we acquired our own combine and we keep upgrading and trying to stay up on the ag side of things too, along with the distillery. So it's been a, kind of like a double whammy trying to keep the distillery and the farm both growing and innovating at the same time.

Jonathan Breeden: No.

Jeremy Norris: So that's how we, knew that. So that's what we kind of got involved and said, if we take our grain and turn it into whiskey, man, that might be sustainable. Well,

Jonathan Breeden: That's value added, right? My father-in-law is a farmer and was a farmer but now, he's largely retired and he has one of his friends farming his land. He owns two farms and I think, that farmer is doing over a thousand acres. If you put all the farms, he's now sharecropping with or leasing out or whatever, including my father in law's two farms up in Maryland.

Jeremy Norris: Oh yeah.

You know,

Jonathan Breeden: As he's watching it and I find the whole thing fascinating.

Jeremy Norris: It's a penny business. Yeah, it's any business. yeah,

Jonathan Breeden: They primarily just rotate corn and soybeans up there in Northern Maryland right. on the Pennsylvania line. And anyway, my father-in-law's, He's he's retired now but I think he's happy to still have the crops there. The crops still create income, you know what I mean? the land's in use and that's all important. And of course, in Maryland and I guess they have this in North Carolina, they have this ag preservation thing as well. Where the government will pay you not to develop your land and keep it as agriculture.

And I know North Carolina has that. My grandfather was in that program 30 years ago before he passed away. And I don't know how big a program it is now but I know it's a thing. And,

Jonathan Breeden: So, when did you start the distillery?

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. So four years from,

Jeremy Norris: it took about four years to put it all together.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay, I got you. And so how did you learn to make distilled spirits?

Jeremy Norris: I grew up on a farm with my granddaddy and his older brother helped us a lot in the field. And both of them were ex bootleggers. you know, back

in the,

in the

Jonathan Breeden: Bootleggers in Johnston County? I've never, I would've never heard of such. so,

you know,

So they were pretty self sufficient folks. And it was a really a common thing. Like all nine, We'll say all the neighbors but a lot of our neighbors and a lot of the acquaintances in the community. Electricity was not a very uncommon thing, even in my lifetime.

Jonathan Breeden: I understand that.

Jeremy Norris: And

Jonathan Breeden: it was,

Jeremy Norris: it was more common back in his heyday. But I, just was with them and I heard them talk about the stories. And they weren't really telling me, it was just stuff I was overhearing and I got intrigued and interested in it. And I actually started making wine and stuff when I was, when I was, 12, 13 years old. And I caught the bug because you can mess it up, you can make it good. I mean, It's a natural occurrence but it's a challenge. So, when you learn how to do it, it never gets old to me. That's how it started.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah Well,

you know, and I'm sure there's still people out there bootlegging and then the whole point of it, I guess it starts back with prohibition back in like the 30s or whatever. But the more modern bootleggers are just trying to not pay the taxes.

The taxes, the government, you know, we had Chad Stewart, the head of the Johnston County Alcohol Beverage Control Board C ommittee, he's their executive director. He was on this podcast a few weeks ago, if you want to know how liquor is regulated in North Carolina go back and listen to that podcast. And so, part of that is these people are trying to avoid these taxes trying to avoid the regulation they want to be able to sell it to, whoever they want to sell it to without having to go through the state.

And it is one of the consequences of a controlled beverage system. I personally think that, we should have the control beverage system that we have but I understand that's why it exists. Everybody's like, we don't have prohibition anymore. Why do we need to bootleggers? They're trying to get around the taxes and being able to sell it to whoever they want to sell it.

Jeremy Norris: Public safety aspect of it.

Jonathan Breeden: Correct.

I think it got enacted, they needed funds, they needed money. So, they enacted the tax on the whiskey and it took off from there. And it's been a good moneymaker for the local and federal government for many, many years. And I think it's a good thing, positive thing. Cause it's just a money generator.

Jonathan Breeden: Right and what Chad Stewart told us was that, the taxes on the liquor is 700 million dollars to the general fund of the state every year. And you talk about a budget this year about 30 billion dollars, 700 million dolars a lot of money. So it's, a money thing, right?

And so that's kind of what it is. So how does it work? What's the process? How long does it take? I don't know anything about it.

You make basically a beer and then we put it in the steel and we distill it. And that just purifies everything and concentrates the alcohol. But in a nutshell, that's pretty much the process. And then we do different things with it. Mainly now, we're barreling a lot of our whiskey. So we'll put it in a barrel and throw it into Rickhouse and it'll stay in there for several years before it ever sees you know, a bottle or glass.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. And then I know people talk about it. So, what is it doing in those years as it sits in the barrel?

And also, you're going to pick up some sugars and some things out of the wood and that's what contributes to, you hear people say, well it's got a vanilla note or a tobacco finish, or you know, I taste raspberries. That actually comes from the woods, the sugars in the wood and that wood's been toasted and charred. So evaporation, the contact it comes in with the wood, that's what makes the complexity of the whiskey.

Jonathan Breeden: That's interesting. And so, y'all make at least four different types.

And then we do another one that we blend them together and we can create different profiles and we'll proof it down to the bourbon's 93 and the rye's about a 96 and we'll it's just a little lower proof. So it's,

Jonathan Breeden: Okay, I gotcha.

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Jonathan Breeden: And then back to the beverage control. How do you sell it? Where do you sell it?

But the main outlet is the North Carolina ABC Commission. It goes to a warehouse in Raleigh and say, for example, Johnston County, if they order it and it comes out of Raleigh. So it goes from Johnston County to Raleigh and then from Raleigh back into Johnston County. And they'll house it and put it on their shelf and sell it.

Jonathan Breeden: I got you. Do you get to set the price?

Jeremy Norris: I do. Now, there's a huge markup in spirits with the federal excise tax, the state excise tax, bailment fees. There's just all kinds of things built into it. So we have a formula that, we, go when we know what we need, our margin needs to be. We add all that stuff up together. We set the price for it. And the state pretty much takes their cut from there And

the fed,

the fed, I mean,

a lot of cuts that come out of that.

Jonathan Breeden: Gotcha. I gotcha. So how much are you selling?

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Jeremy Norris: And there's reports that come out that they'll tell you, you can see what you're doing. We are currently trying to pick up our game at the present moment. And I, for the past 10 years, 12 years, actually now, I have primarily run that distillery right by myself, forest production, everything. And we've been a word of a mouth, grassroots company. But just in the past year or so, both of my sons have come into the business.

So now, we have gotten a lot more help. I can delegate and we're really trying to pick up our whole game for his marketing, distribution, sales, tourism. So, we're kind of right in the middle of all that right now.

Right. So, are you doing this process every week? You do it once a month?

Jonathan Breeden: Okay, man, that's fascinating right here in Johnston County. Let's talk about your tourism thing. I've been to your, facility, I've been to an event there, it's a beautiful barn with a beautiful bar and fireplace. I mean, it is beautiful of any, type venue like that. I've probably ever been to. How do you do weddings? Talk a little bit about that.

high school proms, 8th grade dances, we do some political events, fundraisers, banquets, even maybe some corporate team building events, all kinds of things. We've got sound, projection, screens, all this stuff. So we've kind of set up where we can accommodate pretty much, anything you would need to do that you know, you need 300 space for 300 people. Right,

Jonathan Breeden: Right. Okay, cool. And I mean, how many weddings y'all do every year?

Do you know?

Jeremy Norris: My wife runs that and I want to say total events. I think she does somewhere at 80 some events a year.

Jonathan Breeden: That's a lot. It's more than one a week.

Jeremy Norris: Oh yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: That's a lot. Especially when you're still running a farm and you're distilling.

Jeremy Norris: She does that. She only calls me when something breaks so

that's,

She's responsible for all that. She's done a really good job.

Jeremy Norris: a tobacco barn, a stick tobacco barn that my great grandfather built. And it was in bad shape, roof was tore off. And I went out there and I contemplated tearing it down and I didn't, I got a tinkering on it and we decided to fix it up and we've made an apartment out of it. And it's actually a queen suite, it's two floors, it's got a king bed upstairs, little kitchenette downstairs, bathroom, it is really cool.

And it stays really busy, as far as being booked out. And we've got a little small venue down there for a little small events, 50 people and under. And then we've got a home that sleeps about 12 or 14 people. But yeah, so we're in the Airbnb and then we've just. have recently added a thing called, Harvest Host where RVs and motorhomes come in and they stay overnight and they visit and basically it's a place for them just to park and hang out overnight.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, okay, cool. And y'all do tours of the distillery?

Jeremy Norris: Yeah,

Jonathan Breeden: We do

Jonathan Breeden: And I know, the law has changed now. You can, sell to the tourists who come and take a tour. So you can sell that directly. But other than that, really your only other place you can sell is to the state, correct?

Jeremy Norris: Yeah, it's different in different states. You know, We actually have a online distribution out of DC. I think it's called, Big Thirst Okay. and you can go online and they ship to 35 states. There's 35 states that they can ship into, that they cannot ship into. But so, North Carolina, the online thing and then our storefront is what we're doing right now.

Jeremy Norris: No, we grow enough and sometimes, depending on the year, if we have a really productive year, we'll have some leftover here and there where we can, sell.

But currently, where we're at, if we do a big upgrade forest production or something, we may have to look at adding acres. And one of the main things is maybe some more grain storage but right now we're good,

Jonathan Breeden: I got you but you only want to use what you're growing?

Jeremy Norris: Yeah, that's kind of our thing, why we started the distillery is so it would give us a way to be able to tend to land and stay engaged in farming and not grow houses. right. Yeah, so that's the reason why the distillery was started in the first place and I enjoy the, ag side of things.

Jonathan Breeden: And you are located between Benson and Meadow on highway 50. correct? Right. And,

Jeremy Norris: Depends on where you're coming from.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. If I was coming from anywhere in Johnston County, if I was coming from I-40 East.

Well, so, you know,

Jeremy Norris: you

You can go up 96, that comes right out to 50. Okay.

you know, The 96 highway, if you're coming off of I-40, you're actually probably better to jump on 95 and then come because, if you go down to Meadow to 334, you're coming back up. You're coming back up. So we're basically, we're 4 miles off the Exit 79 of I-95.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Jeremy Norris: And we're two and a half miles off of Exit 334 and Meadow. So it is pretty easy to get to, you can jump off the Interstate or catch 96 and come in or 50 and come in just depending on where you're located.

Well,

Jonathan Breeden: Now, we have Apple Maps and Waze, I mean, it's real easy to get to. It's not, nearly as far as the first time I went, I thought, this is going to take me forever and it really isn't as far as I thought.

Jeremy Norris: Oh yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh yeah.

Jeremy Norris: We, We go through there and they're really good folks. And they're friends of ours and honestly, they create a lot of traffic. Coming by our place and through the crossroads at Meadow. When I say the crossroads of Meadow, I know the restaurant, they just get slammed there in that time of year. But it brings a lot of people that wouldn't normally come to the area, actually. you know, well,

Jonathan Breeden: If you've not ever been to the Meadow Lights is a gigantic outdoor Christmas light display that runs from around Thanksgiving through January 1st.

It is in Meadow. The whole thing when you count the houses and everything is probably a couple hundred acres and there, I don't know, how many different big light fixtures there are but there's a candy store and there's a

Jeremy Norris: train ride,

Jonathan Breeden: train ride, a merry go round and

Jeremy Norris: pictures with Santa. Right. I mean, they've got,

Jeremy Norris: Yeah. You're going to met a restaurant and it's growing. People are figuring out where it's at now. A lot more traffic through that way but not a lot going on right now.

I mean, Other than the grill and the Meadow Lights, I don't want to leave anybody out here. Um, Let's see, there's a lot of things that you might see somewhere else. It comes from that, you know, lot of sweet potato growers and a lot of tobacco growers from around there.

You wouldn't think

it,

Jeremy Norris: You wouldn't think it was the same county. right? Right. Difference is night and day between the two ends of the county. And then, if you got really to go down towards Bentonville and Devil's Racetrack down there. it it is really it gets kind of, it's still desolate back.

Jonathan Breeden: No, it is very desolate.

Jeremy Norris: Yeah, I remember when this community was a lot like Meadow at one time. It's amazing what it's done over the years.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, it's crazy with the growth. So anyway, or the next question is, if somebody wanted to get up with you and, come visit the distillery or have a wedding, how can they get in contact with y'all?

Well, That's cool.

Well, well,

Jonathan Breeden: The last question we always ask everybody is, you being from Johnston County, grew up here, still live here, raised your family here. What do you love most about Johnston County?

Jeremy Norris: like the people, the people from Johnston County and it's, you know, there's a lot of little community pockets throughout the county and it's really is a small net county when you get, or close net county, I guess, would be the right word for it.

But the sense of community, we still got agriculture. If you need something, you can come out here to 42 but if you want to get back out to the country, it's still there, it still exists. But that's probably my favorite thing.

Jonathan Breeden: agree 100%. Well, We'd like to thank Jeremy Norris for coming and being on The Best of Johnston County podcast.

As we said earlier, feel free to like, subscribe or follow this podcast, wherever you're seeing it today and come check back new episodes of The Best Johnston County podcast. As we said earlier, come out every Monday till next time. I'm your host, Jonathan Breed.

If the legal aspects highlighted raised some questions, help is just around the corner at www.BreedenFirm. com.