When Luke Davidson opened Maine Craft Distilling Co a dozen years ago, he had no thoughts of canning cocktails. He had whiskey on his mind, and making 100 per cent Maine spirits.
“We wanted to make a Maine-grown whiskey in the Scottish tradition,” explains Davidson. “Keeping it in Maine was important to us.”
Fifty Stone Single Malt Whiskey is made from Maine barley, 10 per cent of which is smoked with a blend of seaweed and peat from Cherryfield in Downeast Maine.
Davidson describes his “highland-style” as “a little bit smoky, not too much — campfire versus chimney — and very barley forward, a caramel flavour, not so cherry.”
While the whiskey was ageing, Davidson had to keep the distillery lights on by creating unique spirits such as Blueshine Blueberry Liquor, flavoured with blueberries and maple syrup. Mixed with lemonade, it became the tasting room’s top-selling cocktail — but Blueshine was not selling well in bottles.
On a 2016 trip to Europe, he saw gin and tonics in a can and a lightbulb switched on in Davidson’s head. He says, “As soon as I saw those cans, I was like, ‘Oh, we got to do this.’”
“All of a sudden: Boom! We're selling millions of dollars’ worth of canned cocktails,” says Davidson. “And yeah, we get to make whiskey for fun.”
Ready-to-drink cocktails (RTDs) now account for 90 per cent of Maine Craft Distilling’s business and are opening up new distribution channels for bottle sales. Of the handful of RTDs it makes, Blueshine Lemonade is the top seller, followed by Maine Mule and Cranberry Island Cocktail.
Two thirds of the way across the country, Safe House Distilling Company was having a similar experience with Teller Blueberry Lavender Vodka. Though the distillery was founded with bourbon in mind, owner/distiller Chris Leurig knew having a variety of spirits would be essential to a full cocktail programme at the downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico tasting room.
“Mix it with lemonade. It tastes great,” says Leurig. “Try to sell it at liquor stores and people were very confused on how to do that.”
Even though the cocktails were delicious, consumers weren’t buying bottles.
Leurig says, “What if we just put it in a can with lemonade ourselves? And so, we mixed it with lemonade, started canning it, and then those sales just exploded.”
Safe House originally contracted with a co-packer to can Teller Cocktails. It wasn’t long before Leurig figured he could reduce the cost of goods sold by about 70 per cent by getting Safe House its own canning line. Not long after that, the distillery was able to purchase the co-packer. Safe House now operates five canning lines, making products for itself and others, with capacity to grow. Not only is the canning operation booming but it is paying for the distillery to lay down barrels of whiskey.
“This year we've doubled the amount of whiskey in our rick house this year from the previous four years,” says Leurig.
Safe House’s Prophet Share Straight Bourbon Whiskey has a high-rye mash bill with 18 per cent rye, 10 per cent malted barley, and 72 per cent corn and is released in four expressions: 90 Proof, Cask Strength, Single Barrel Cask Strength, and Bottled in Bond. Safe House is also working on a wheated bourbon, which will be released in the same four expressions.
After graduating from the University of New Mexico, Leurig interned at what was then Witherspoon Distillery (now called Bendt Distillery), in Lewisville, Texas. Working for about US$100 a week for three months, he helped the owners through an expansion. The experience not only helped him plan his distillery, but also gave Leurig experience in managing barrels in a dry climate, where more water than alcohol evaporates from the barrel, driving up ABV. The high-desert climate also has wide daily temperature swings, pushing the whiskey in and out of the barrel and increasing extraction of tannins, creating a robust flavour profile. Leurig returned to Albuquerque to found the Safe House distillery in 2019.
New Mexico's liquor laws make it easy to distribute within the state and Albuquerque’s location, at the junction of two major interstate highways, provides logistical advantages for distribution to other Southwestern states. Unlike whiskey, which can’t be rushed, vodka-based cocktails can be ramped up quickly for large orders, and this has allowed Teller Cocktails to meet the demands of the large multi-state retailers like Albertsons, Smith’s Food and Drug, Costco Wholesale, Total Wine & More, Walmart, Walgreens, and CVS.
Teller Cocktails currently sells 60,000–80,000 cans a month of Blueberry Lavender Vodka Lemonade, Grapefruit Hibiscus Vodka Lemonade, Vodka Mule, Vodka Hard Tea, Cherry Limeade, and Watermelon Walk Off. The last is a partnership with the local minor-league baseball team, the Albuquerque Isotopes, for whom it also makes a Tequila-based cocktail, Mariachi Margarita.
Low ABV also allows canned cocktails to go through the wider-open channels for wine and beer distribution rather than deal with distilled-spirits distribution, which suffers from tighter regulation and a logjam of small brands. It was a problem that, before RTDs, had Maine Craft Distilling flustered.
“The beer channel is so well lubricated and the distributors in that market are efficient and absolutely motivated and capable,” says Davidson. Maine Craft Distilling sells canned cocktails in 11 states, mostly along the Eastern Seaboard, especially New England.
Virginia Beach-based Tarnished Truth Distilling Company also sells RTDs in 11 states, mostly on the Eastern Seaboard, but concentrated more in the South. Both plan to expand in 2025, with canned cocktails paving the way for whiskey.
“We're growing this big distribution network of RTDs, but the goal is to then come in with the spirits,” says Andrew Yancey, co-owner and operator of Tarnished Truth. “A lot of these distributors sell spirits as well. So that we can say, ‘Look at this product we make. We do really well on the RTDs. Now we want you to try our bourbon.’”
Like Davidson and Leurig, Yancey started the distillery in with whiskey on his mind. He hired former Seagrams/MGP master distiller Larry Ebersold, who distilled so many of the legendary barrels from MGP, to design the distillery. Tarnished Truth distills Discretion Virginia Straight Bourbon Whiskey (a wheated bourbon) and the Tarnished Truth High Rye Straight Bourbon Whiskey. Ebersold also selected some prime barrels of MGP, which is released as Old Cavalier Straight Bourbon Whiskey.
Tarnished Truth opened in 2017 in the Cavalier Hotel, a famed Roaring '20s resort that remained hot throughout the 20th century. Rich and famous guests include Frank Sinatra, Muhammad Ali, Elizabeth Taylor, Bing Crosby, F Scott Fitzgerald, Bette Davis, Doris Day, Cab Calloway, and nine US Presidents.
Richard Nixon is rumoured to have burned papers in the fireplace there during the Watergate scandal. Adolph Coors, founder of the Coors Brewery Company, fell to his death from a sixth-floor window under mysterious circumstances.
“There's a lot of these tarnished stories about things that have happened in the hotel, and some of them are true,” says Yancey on the distillery’s name. “And that's where the Tarnished Truth came from.”
The Hunt Room, the former hunting club for the resort, is now the Tarnished Truth’s tasting room. Next to the spa in the basement is the cozy, dark restaurant, a good place to escape from both chilling winters and steamy summers. The tasting room has a large fireplace, taxidermy-decorated walls, and windows looking into the distillery’s production area.
“It's a really unique restaurant that's super cocktail-focused, obviously, and heavily game-inspired on the cuisine,” says Yancey. “We try to use a lot of venison, duck, and quail, and our Brunswick stew is made with rabbit.”
The Hunt Room’s cocktail programme gave birth to Coastal Cocktails.
“We had a pretty successful cocktail bar, and we made a lot of cocktails that very clearly stood out as far as the sales,” says Yancey. “And we said, man, if we could bottle these, you know, wouldn't that be cool?”
“I immediately made the decision I was never going to use artificial flavouring,” he continues. “We don't use any artificial flavourings, no added sugar. You know, it's literally just juice, spirits, and water.”
Tarnished Truth partnered with a local fruit juice company to produce eight cocktails (expanding to 10 in 2025) for Coastal Cocktails. The top three sellers are Vodka Orange Crush, Gin Blackberry Bramble, and Whiskey Lemonade. Coastal Cocktails launched in late 2021, selling 20,000 cases in 2022, rising to 125,000 cases in 2024. That success allows Tarnished Truth Bourbon to venture into new mash bills and barrel finishes.
“Money from the RTDs… propels experimentation in making the kind of whiskey that we'd like to make,” says Yancey. “We have started a second shift at the distillery now. So, we're running 24 hours a day.”
Davidson expresses a similar delight: “I made the exact whiskey that I love and I’m lucky because it’s my favourite whiskey.”
Since chilled cocktails are seasonal, Maine Craft Distilling does 80 per cent of its business from May to September. This leaves the colder months for other things.
“You get to make whiskey in the winter. It's happening right now, as we speak,” says Davidson. “So, the winter is here for us and we're whiskeying!”
