Top of the Hill Restaurant & Brewery vodka goes on sale

Top of the Hill Restaurant & Brewery is now adding vodka to its list of organic, locally sourced menu items.

Top of the Hill’s new vodka became available for purchase at ABC stores in Carrboro on Tuesday.

The liquor will be available at Top of the Hill and other Chapel Hill restaurants by Thursday.

Scott Maitland, proprietor of Top of the Hill, said the TOPO vodka is distilled in Chapel Hill and made entirely from local, organic ingredients.

He said TOPO is the only local, organic distillery in the South.

A 750 milliliter bottle of vodka costs $28.95.

The distillery is not Maitland’s first venture into the world of alcoholic beverage production.

TOPO has been brewing beer in its microbrewery for years.

Maitland said he found that beer brewed in North Carolina could not be truly local because malting houses can’t operate in the North Carolinian climate.

But he realized that a distillery would not face the same problems because ingredients used for the production of vodka could be sourced entirely locally.

“I got excited when I realized that I could make a world-class product using only local agricultural ingredients,” Maitland said. “That really got me pumped.”

Maitland’s focus on local ingredients resonates with the recent movement by restaurateurs to source local food.

And potential customers have taken notice.

UNC senior Seth Crabtree said that while he does not drink much liquor, he appreciates Maitland’s efforts to use local ingredients.

“I would probably be more likely to go to TOPO knowing they are doing that sort of thing,” he said.

“If you can keep the money churning in your own local economy, it is just so much better for everybody,” he said.

Maitland said he thinks the micro distillery movement has the potential to take off — and TOPO is on the front end of that movement.

By using local ingredients, Maitland said he hopes to make it easier for both farmers and consumers to switch to organic products.

And in order to keep downtown Chapel Hill vibrant, it has to become a hub of nontraditional manufacturing centers, like micro distilleries, Maitland said.

Maitland said he and his team do not intend to stop at vodka.

TOPO investor Esteban McMahan said in late October, the distillery will release an age-your-own whiskey set with a two liter American oak cask, three bottles of unaged whiskey, a funnel and a glass.

Because of the high surface area to volume ratio of the two liter cask, the whiskey should take only four to five months of aging to acquire the taste of two-year-old whiskey, McMahan said.

TOPO is also working with The Daily Tar Heel to produce an app that locates establishments selling TOPO products in the area.

Contact the desk editor at city@dailytarheel.com.