Adam Dalton Distillery

A 58-gallon copper still, built as a custom hybrid, runs behind the bar at 251 Biltmore Avenue, and nothing that comes out of it starts with grain — four kinds of sugar, fresh apple juice, and blue agave go in instead, producing Hammond Oak Rum, Appleachian Vodka, and Araña Blanca Vodka. Adam Dalton grew up in Kernersville, met a countryside moonshiner, studied business administration at UNC Asheville, then traveled to the Virgin Islands and St. Kitts to learn the Caribbean rum process before opening downtown Asheville’s first distillery. The tasting room next to the still is closed for now. The dive bar attached to it isn’t — pool, arcade games and table tennis running the whole time, a few feet from the still itself. The cocktail list leans on the house spirits rather than around them: the Paloma swaps the agave vodka in for tequila, and the Espresso Martini runs on Hammond Coffee Rum instead of the usual vodka. Most of the rest lean on the same house-made syrups — raspberry, thyme, blackberry, hibiscus — stirred into whichever of the three spirits is closest. Sixteen drinks rotate through the list, among them Bikini Bottom, South Slope, and The Dude Abides. Bottles of the same spirits also sit in ABC stores across North Carolina, but the still that made them keeps working a few feet from the pool table, and nobody behind the bar treats that as strange. Start with whatever the still finished most recently, then take it to the pool table.