Brandon McCraney bought a building in 2019 with plans to open a distillery in April 2020.
Yeah. That April.
The timing was bad, but COVID wasn’t actually the thing that nearly killed the project. It was the Wake County inspectors who approved his building design, then proceeded to make him change almost everything once construction started. By the time he opened in January 2021, he’d gone through his construction budget, his contingency fund, all the money set aside for process piping, and his entire 401k.
The stills he bought in 2018? They’re still sitting in the building in Zebulon. Never been fired up. Probably never will be.
When the Plan Falls Apart
Brandon’s original vision was straightforward enough: train a team to distill, lay down barrels, and eventually blend his own aged whiskey. But when the world changes theres a moment where he has to decide what he was actually doing.
“I had this come-to-Jesus moment with myself,” he told me. “What do I have to do, and what do I love to do? My craft is blending. And blending is completely different from distilling.”
So he pivoted. Hard.
Today Olde Raleigh sources from 11 different distilleries across five states. Brandon works with 14 cask types from around the world—Armagnac, Tawny Port, Palo Cortado Sherry, Spanish orange wine, honey casks, coffee casks. He doesn’t repeat batches. Ever. Each release is built from whatever he’s pulled from what he calls his “pantry” of barrels, and when it’s gone, it’s gone.
Building a Bouquet
Brandon talks about sourcing the way a florist might talk about building an arrangement. Some barrels are the roses—they anchor the blend, provide structure and volume. Others are accent pieces. A pop of flavor on the front. A long finish that builds into a crescendo. Something that wouldn’t work on its own but makes everything around it better.
“The art of blending is layering these elements on top of one another,” he said, “so the sum is greater than its individual parts.”
His small batch uses nine different recipes. The barrel proof pulls from four grains across nine mashbills, ranging from four to 21 years old. Both get dumped into a 350-gallon tank and rested—sometimes for three months—before he starts proofing down. And that proofing happens slowly. Weeks, not days.
“At 120 proof, it tastes one way. As you drop down, you’re taking the mic away from the fire. All these lighter notes start looking to sing. My job is to figure out if I like what’s being sung.”
The Thousand Blends Mission
Here’s where it gets a little crazy.
Brandon’s current project is to release 1,000 unique one-off blends. He calls it “Project Thousand Blends.” Every week, he puts out three one-of-one bottles—different finishes, different combinations, different experiments. Visitors to the tasting room can try flights of whatever’s current and scan a QR code to give feedback.
It’s part R&D lab, part proof of concept, and entirely about putting in reps.
“How do you become the best at anything?” Brandon asked. “You get the reps. That word ‘master blender’—I own that title. But I want to earn it by outworking every other blender in the world.”
At his current pace, he’ll release 181 distinct products this year. That includes the Thousand Blends bottles, member exclusives for the Olde Raleigh Whiskey Society, limited releases like Olde Stoge, and his core lineup.
I don’t know anyone else in the industry doing anything close to that volume of unique expressions to be released, not to mention the ones that never see the public.
Olde Stogie and the Armagnac That Wasn’t Ready
Olde Stogie is probably Olde Raleigh’s flagship limited release at this point—a bourbon finished in Armagnac and Tawny Port casks, designed to pair with cigars. It won best micro-distillery in the US at an international competition in 2023.
Brandon didn’t even know that was something you could win.
“I submitted it to get a report card,” he said. “I’m out here in rural North Carolina. The prominent blenders are in Scotland. I just wanted to know—how am I doing against the folks who started it all?”
Apparently pretty well.
But the real lesson from Olde Stogie was patience. Around month eight of the finishing process, Brandon noticed the Armagnac really starting to open up into the bourbon. Instead of bottling, he let it sit another six months.
“Sometimes good things just take time. You can rush it. But you’re probably not going to get the best version of what you’re making.”
Hand Everything
If you’re a process efficiency consultant, Olde Raleigh will make you twitch. There’s no automation. Blending is done with paddles. Bottling is by hand. Labeling is by hand. Brandon calls himself “a Six Sigma consultant’s worst nightmare.”
But that’s the trade-off for owning 100% of the company. No investors telling him that 181 releases in a year is excessive. No board questioning why he’s experimenting with a 10-cask finish that nobody asked for. No pressure to expand into 15 states before the product is ready.
“I don’t really have hobbies,” Brandon admitted. “Olde Raleigh is my baby. I had a couple drive five hours from Charleston to spend two hours with us, then drive five hours back. I think about that. They could’ve been anywhere. They chose to spend their Saturday here.”
The stills are still sitting in the building. Brandon calls them the most expensive art exhibit in Zebulon.
But the blending—the thing he thought he was working toward—turned out to be the whole point.
Olde Raleigh Whiskey is located in Zebulon, North Carolina. The next Olde Stoge release drops in two weeks. For more information or to join the Whiskey Society, visit olderaleighwhiskey.com.
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