Appalachian Gap Distillery cofounders Lars Hubbard and Chuck Burkins sold majority ownership of their Middlebury distillery to longtime employee Will Drucker in July.
The pair launched the distillery in 2011 with a focus on whiskey after taking a course at New York’s Cornell University on artisanal distilling. In 2018, Drucker, living in Brooklyn at the time, partnered with Appalachian Gap to brew Split Spirits, his idea for a whiskey line infused with flavors from various types of wood.
In 2020, Drucker moved to Vermont and became more involved in Appalachian Gap’s sales and marketing operations. A Middlebury College graduate with a passion for sustainability, he said the distillery was a natural fit. In 2021, the company became the first distillery in the nation to offset its carbon footprint entirely.
“We just kind of hit it off in terms of their ethos and approach to making spirits,” Drucker said of the founders. That ethos involved “wanting to utilize local ingredients, supporting organic farms as much as possible and generating the right energy through solar.”
Drucker declined to share the purchase price but said he financed it with a combination of personal funds and money from friends and family. Hubbard and Burkins will maintain a share of the company, he said, which reduced the cash requirement.
At the helm of Appalachian Gap, Drucker said he plans to launch a bourbon that’s been aged for roughly five years and work more closely with local bars and restaurants.
“We’re not trying to go nationwide, necessarily,” Drucker said. “A lot of our products are very rooted in Vermont, and so we want to lean into that.”
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This article appears in Sep 27 – Oct 3, 2023.
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