Lexington County, South Carolina · Friendly Spirits
American whiskey, rum, and gin. Long mash ferments. Long, slow distillation. A place to taste it — still being built.
Our mission
Craft spirits that not only taste amazing but treat the drinker well. Push quality through experimentation — testing the boundaries of what is known. Make wine that is unique in a good way, through fortification and age.
Mythical Distilling is a South Carolina whiskey, rum, gin, and wine project. Grain grown here, distilled here, aged here — then poured in a tasting room, restaurant, and rooms that belong to the same story. The motto is Friendly Spirits. This is American single malt whiskey and experimental spirits.
The work is to make spirits that taste exceptional and treat you well too. Build a place people travel for. The first whiskey is Paddycorn: half rice, half barley.
The Spirits
Paddycorn is in glass now. The paper label on that bottle is a sample. The other four bottles are concept labels — creatures tied to what is in the glass.
50% rice, 50% barley. Whiskey from two grains and two kinds of ground — flooded rice and dry barley. Aged 19 months in an ex-bourbon barrel. Bottled at 100 proof / 50% ABV. Long mash ferment. Long, slow distillation.
First bottling · sample label
Rum aged in an ex-bourbon barrel and a refill peach-wine cask. The phoenix is the peach’s old companion — fruit that comes back.
Concept label
American single malt whiskey aged in an ex-bourbon barrel. Rosemary in the spirit. The dryad on the label is the herb’s old companion — remembrance, evergreen, South Carolina.
Concept label
Gin with vanilla and rosemary notes. A winged garden serpent through vanilla bloom and rosemary — the botanical spirit of the still.
Concept label
American single malt. Three years in an ex-bourbon barrel, then a five-month finish in a special cask. Peated malt. The dragon is the one you keep — aged, then finished with care.
Concept label
Whiskey & Wine
Paddycorn is rice and barley. Beside it: American single malts, peach rum, and botanical gin. The same land is meant to grow fruit for wine so the table can hold flights, a bottle, and a meal. Target scale, in time: 760 to 1,000 barrels of whiskey a year, with an aging warehouse built for that volume.
The wash
The mash is cooked grain and water. Yeast turn that into a wash — the beer that goes to the still. Most grain washes are pulled at two or three days, once the sugar is gone. We leave ours on for 200 hours and longer. The extra days are not for more alcohol. They are for esters: the compounds that smell like ripe fruit, citrus peel, and orchard — built from grain, not from fruit in the tank.
A 48- to 72-hour wash is efficient. It ferments clean and tastes of grain. Fine if the barrel is meant to do all the talking. It does not give the still much fruit to keep.
Past the first few days, yeast and a quiet secondary phase keep making acids and esters. Distillers who run five- to seven-day washes do it for that: pineapple, pear, stone fruit, a rounder body — already in the wash before copper ever sees it.
Two hundred hours is more than eight days. That is the target for Paddycorn and the other grain spirits: a wash dense enough that a long, slow distillation has something worth catalyzing on the copper.
The still
Distillation here is not a fast strip. The run is long and slow so vapor spends time on copper. Copper is a catalyst: it binds sulfur, reshapes flavor compounds, and helps esters survive the trip from wash to spirit. Rush the still and you keep the harsh notes and lose the fruit the mash spent 200 hours making.
Heat moves vapor. Copper does chemistry. Sulfur compounds react on the metal and drop out. Other molecules rearrange. That catalytic work needs contact time — a slow run, not a blast through the still.
The long mash ferment built esters that read as fruit. A hard, fast distillation can tear them up or bury them in sulfur. A long, gentle cut lets those notes stay in the heart of the run.
Heads and tails are taken with patience. The heart is what Paddycorn is bottled from. Time on copper is as much a choice as time in the fermenter or time in the barrel.
The place
The destination is not built yet. The plan is a working landscape you can inhabit: production you can see, a table you can sit at, rooms you can book, and events that turn a cask into a wedding story.
Flights, pours, and a kitchen that treats whiskey and wine as part of the meal — not an afterthought.
Overnight stays so the destination is complete. Wake up on the property. Walk the vineyard. Tour the stills.
Event venue and the option to lay down a cask for a wedding, anniversary, or private label.
Building it
Mythical Distilling is not a finished campus. The spirits are real. The tasting room, winery, and rooms are still ahead. If you want to help raise that place — land, capital, or know-how — write Ben. The bottle and the experience come first. The rest is how they get a home.
Contact
Questions about the spirits, the property, or a visit — write ben@mythicaldistillery.com.
Mythical Distilling & Winery Resort
Lexington County, South Carolina
mythicaldistilling.com
mythicaldistillery.com