Craft distillers ask state to repeal Prohibition-era laws
The owner of New Jersey’s largest estate winery would like to do it. So would the mayor of Princeton Township. But so far, the only person to open a distillery in post-Prohibition New Jersey is James Yoakum. The 27-year-old Philadelphia real estate broker is waiting final approval to start legally making his Petty’s Island Rum and other spirits in a former garage in downtown Camden.
As a one-man operation that will at first produce no more than 2,500 gallons of liquor annually, Yoakum’s Cooper River Distillers falls well within the bounds of a “craft distillery,” according to a working definition adopted by The American Distilling Institute (TADI), the nation’s leading proponent for small-batch distilling. (Nurin, NJ Spotlight)
