About GIA Distillery

In the small town of Madison, North Carolina sits a 125-year-old train station. But these days, locomotives aren’t pulling in and out of the station. Since 2017, the defunct train station has been home to GIA Distillery, a small batch distillery with roots firmly planted in old world techniques.

GIA Distillery was founded by Sal Giaimo and Mark Sorrells. Between their collective experience, there’s well over a half-century’s worth of expertise behind the independent North Carolina distillery. Mark has been homebrewing since the 1980s, and Sal produced wine on his grandfather’s Italian vineyard for decades. Craft distilling was just the next logical step.

GIA Distillery stands apart by aging their whiskey using an old European style known as the Solera style. The unique aging process works by stacking barrels on top of one another. When whiskey from the bottom barrel is bottled, the rest flows down into the emptied barrels. It’s a labor-intensive process, but for GIA Distillery, it’s a labor of love.