New Royal Oak Microdistillery Is a 'Gas'

Motor City Gas held its grand opening on St. Patrick’s Day. (Photo via Facebook)

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Motor City Gas couldn’t have picked a better day to introduce the drinking public to its first barrel of whiskey – Royal Oak Rye, a blended rye whiskey aged six months in small barrels.

The Royal Oak microdistillery began serving whiskey Tuesday, on St. Patrick’s Day.

The 2,200-square-foot distillery and tasting room, located at 325 E. Fourth St., is the brainchild of Rich Lockwood, 39, of Royal Oak.

Lockwood has had the idea of opening a distillery in the back of his mind for a decade, but when he lost his marketing job in a 2013 layoff, he took the plunge to launch the business, Crain’s Detroit Business reports.

He learned everything he could about distilling whiskey from some well-aged pros – Chicago-based Koval, Traverse City-based Grand Traverse Distillery, Lake Leelanau-based Northern Latitudes Distillery and the distillery workshop program at Michigan State University – and opened within two years.

The distillery’s name honors not only the Detroit metro’s legacy as the North American headquarters to for the auto industry, but also an inside joke between friends.

Gas, Lockwood told Crain’s Detroit Business, “is something that my friends and I used to refer to whiskey.”

“And it kind of caught on,” he said. “As we got into this, there were a lot of parallels with the name and what we were doing. It’s a nickname that stuck.”

In addition to the Royal Oak Rye, which has a sweeter bourbon-like taste because of the amount of corn used in the distillation process, Lockwood says more spirits will be introduced in the coming weeks, including a barrel-aged Apple Pie Moonshine and Belly Up Bourbon.

Regular hours for the tasting room will be noon-8 p.m., Wednesday-Thursday.

» Read more on Crain’s Detroit Business.