The American Distilling Institute (ADI) awarded its highest honor, the prestigious Bubble Cap Award, to Southern Distilling Company. The award was announced during the Gala Awards Luncheon at the 22nd annual ADI Craft Spirits Conference & Expo, which took place this year in San Antonio, Texas. 

ADI president Erik Owens presented the award on stage to Southern Distilling Company’s co-founders, Pete and Vienna Barger.

Since 2008, ADI’s Distillery of the Year award, which is affectionately known as The Bubble Cap Award, has been given to distilleries that have raised the bar of the craft distilling industry by making world-class spirits and improving the legislative landscape for craft distillers. 

“Southern Distilling Company is making great whiskey, but they’ve also changed the game for craft distilleries in North Carolina,” Owens said. 

As founding members of the Distillers Association of North Carolina, Pete, Vienna, and their team have helped pass laws benefiting the entire industry, including unlimited tasting room bottle sales, the ability to sell cocktails in the tasting room and do in-store samplings, and legislation that requires ABC boards to bring in North Carolina products when requested.

Erik also commented on Southern Distilling Company’s exceptional Southern Star product line, which has earned top international awards at all the most important competitions — including 14 medals at the ADI International Spirits Competition. Their many contract clients have likely won hundreds more. 

“Southern Distilling Company has an unshakable commitment to quality — for their own brands, and for their clients,” Owens said. “Every bottle reflects their commitment to craft and transparency. Their ability to unlock that level of quality for the wider industry is a true testament to their community orientation and a key part of why they deserve to be recognized on the world stage.”

“In 2013, we set out with a radical new idea in the industry: to establish a non-corporate but large-scale, family-owned and operated contract distilling operation in Statesville, North Carolina,” Pete Barger said. “Southern Distilling Company became a solution for small and emerging, as well as established brands, that focused on what made each of these brands unique and special.”

“Twelve years later, our team takes great pride in being a part of helping more than 170 brands and clients achieve their dreams,” Vienna Barger added. “We are humbled that we have had the opportunity to partner with so many other entrepreneurs, as we all adjust our sails together, each time the spirits industry shifts and changes”

Previous winners of the Bubble Cap award can be found on distilling.com.

Read more: Southern Distilling Releases Southern Star Rye

About Southern Distilling Company

Family-owned and operated by Pete and Vienna Barger, Southern Distilling Company has proudly reignited North Carolina’s distilling tradition while embracing the innovative future of America’s craft spirits industry. Headquartered in storied Statesville, N.C. — once labeled the “liquor capital of the world” in the 1800s — Southern Distilling Company has grown to become one of the country’s largest privately owned distilleries since being founded in 2013. For more information, visit https://southerndistillingcompany.com/.