Indiana Economic Development: Indiana Micro-distillery

Some thing I found researching something for the practice. What follows does not fit well into that article but fits better with my economic development hectoring I do here.

Star-Telegram.com: | 11/25/2007 | These farms' cash crop is bottled:

"Indiana: The Huber farm Ted Huber runs the Starlight Distillery on his farm in southern Indiana, but he had to help change Indiana law before he could do it. 'There was no way for me to have an artisan distillery the way Indiana law was written after Prohibition,' said Huber, who helped draft the law enacted six years ago. Indiana changed part of its law in 2001 to allow wineries to operate stills. In the mid-'90s, Michigan dropped the license fee to make spirits from $10,000 to $1,000. Now it is home to at least 10 microdistilleries. Nebraska is the latest state to deregulate part of the industry."

Starlight Distillery has a very good-looking web page here. (Brilliant bit of marketing here - get the web page, open yourself to business throughout the world. I hope other Indiana businesses take heart with this - get your products out amongst the wider world.)

Welcome to Huber's Starlight Distillery located at Huber's Orchard & Winery in beautiful Starlight, IN. We are proud to be producing brandies much like our ancestors did during the early 1800's. You will find that our distillery produces only the finest products and that our master distillers, Ted Huber and Jason Heiligenberg, are committed to crafting brandies in the finest artisanal European tradition. Our estate bottled winery produces wines with intense varietal character that are hand distilled in individual batches allowing for the ultimate expression of the distillers art.

Take a look at the web page for the winery, too. Good example of cross-selling - their own businesses and Starlight, Indiana. Anyone not see how this can be applied to our local businesses? (Which reminds me I ought to take a look at our local businesses that are online.)

thinkbeta.com wrote about this distillery in Great New Startup Area:

"Closer to home, down the road in a burg named Starlight, Indiana, the Huber brothers have their own micro-distillery up and running. Turns out the Porsche Club of which I was a member in the past used to have an annual Porsche drive-in at the Huber Winery - been there, done that. The Hubers worked hard convincing the Indiana lawmakers that it would be in their best interests to open up antiquated laws and modify them to permit the making of products based on wine ingredients. Thus, The Startlight Distillery is into brandies, pictured at left on the barrel. With neat names like Apple Infusion (Details), Blueberry Port (Details), Peach Nectar (Details), and Raspberry Infusion (Details), they are also selling all they can make."

I would like to mention that thinkbeta.com is written by a Purdue University Professor.

For a general background article on micro-distilleries, read Forbes' Crafty Spirits. Bottom line: Huber's Starlight Distillery is in the forefront of a trend, and how many other Indiana business are and how many others could be?