View Larger View Larger The Bottom Line Other Business Features Local Stories from ThisWeek More Articles By JD Malone The Columbus Dispatch Wednesday October 8, 2014 1:53 AM

The guys running Mill Street Distillery in Utica didnt get their inspiration to make moonshine from some deep-woods still or a friends basement experiment.

They found distillation enlightenment in Crete.

On various trips, Carlos Ogden, Jeff Thompson and their partners discovered artisanal pot-still liquors in villages across the island. Most of the booze was grappa, made from the second pressing of grapes, and the few bottles they brought home didnt last long.

We couldnt wait another 10 months for another bottle, Thompson said. There was only one way we could do it and not get into too much trouble.

That was to make their own. They laid plans for a distillery and started asking friends what they thought about it. The response was overwhelming.

We said we needed money for a distillery, Ogden said, and there was money coming from everywhere.

They chose moonshine as their standard product because no one else made it in Ohio, it doesnt have to age like bourbon or other whiskeys, and it can be made year round from Ohio corn.

Ogden said he was stunned when he found out no one else in Ohio made or marketed moonshine before last year. It could be partly because of Ohios history as the bedrock of the anti-alcohol movement. In 1919, deep in the Westerville headquarters of the Anti-Saloon League, teetotalers would have raged over a place like Mill Street.

Ogden strides around the year-old distillery, a short jog down a gravel drive off Uticas main drag, in a gray shirt that reads, Moonshine is not a crime.

The rest is here:

Moonshine distillery in Utica launches grappa