Cultivated Cocktails Distillery & Tavern

People here don’t crowd the bar rail so much as the equipment behind it. A candlelit dinner table sits beneath barrels racked in tiers to the ceiling. Elsewhere, guests take their seats elbow-to-elbow with the stainless tanks, a jar of dry botanicals between them. A regular night reads differently: a numbered floor of tables, a crowd three deep at the rail, no barrel in sight.

The Howards date the operation to 2012; the room at 161 Charlotte Highway came later. Taylor Howard’s own start was a bachelor party at Highland Brewing, where the neighboring still caught his attention. He and his cousin Jacob built a first still in Fairview; his father Wendell later bought out Jacob’s share. By 2019 the business had a new name. Stills now sited in Reynolds, a valley outside town, turn out a full house line: gin, rum, vodka, rye.

None of it comes off a distributor’s list. The house ginger cordial took gold at the 2023 Bartender Spirits Awards — not that it says so anywhere near the bar. The Pistachio Gin Sour builds its HWY 9 Gin against a house pistachio-cherry syrup. The coffee liqueur in the Morning After medaled that year too. A bar buying its gin and vodka from a distributor can’t rework a recipe when a batch turns out better. Here, the list changes because the still does.

Reel Adams, the head distiller, and chef Joshua Rivenbark ran the first of those dinners in February, seats capped low on purpose. Weekly trivia holds its slot regardless of the season. A Mardi Gras casino night comes back every year — one the Howards call an honor to keep hosting.

The rye ages past seven years and never leaves the building. No distributor carries it. No bar down the road stocks it.