[country rock music] - Colonel Joseph was my great great great grandfather.

He was a revolutionary war hero, and he started making liquor as soon as he had a roof over his head.

- [Narrator] That would've been 1768 on Joseph Williams property in what is now Lewisville.

- Everybody back then made liquor, and he was good at what he did, and and over time, people began to bring him other liquor that they couldn't rectify, and the stage was set.

- [Narrator] It was called the Williams Distillery then.

By the late 1800s, it was in the hands of Joseph's great-grandson, Glenn.

- My great-grandfather is Nicholas Glenn Williams.

He actually renamed the distillery Old Nick Williams for his grandfather when he inherited it.

- [Narrator] Glen didn't like the fact barrels were taxed when the whiskey went in, so he changed that too.

- You lose stuff, it evaporates, they drop it, you leak, and so you're paying taxes on stuff that you're never gonna sell.

So he fought that to the Supreme Court, and now we pay taxes after they come outta the barrel.

- [Narrator] Around the turn of the 20th century, Glenn had helped make Old Nick Williams one of the largest distilleries in the Southeast.

Their brand of whiskey, bourbon and brandy had already caught the attention of James Buchanan, and soon had Theodore Roosevelt riding to the Williams too.

Hospitals even requested more good corn and rye whiskey for medicinal use.

But in 1908, laws were enacted in North Carolina making it illegal to sell whiskey here.

- Well, they had 28,000 gallons of liquor on the property between bottles and barrels, and they busted up the barrels to dispose of them.

- So they destroyed anything that had to do with the distillery.

- [Narrator] The Old Nick Williams Company was no more.

That is until the latest generations of the Williams clan reopened the distillery over 100 years later on the very site Glen had used.

- All I'm doing it here is cooking my grains.

We actually started our first production in 2015.

We did not have it open to the public until June 17th '17.

- [Narrator] Staying true to tradition, the family is once again producing a line of distilled spirits like clear whiskey and their famous bourbon.

- The fun part about our bourbon is we're using the mash-filled that the family used pre-prohibition.

- We drew a syringe out of one of our old existing bottles and sent that off to a lab and had it tested to what they could tell best was the percentages of what was in it, and we went from there.

- [Narrator] Add to that cinnamon whiskey.

- [Ashlee] We don't add sugar or artificial flavors to it so it's a good sipper.

It's not sweet.

We have a rye whiskey.

We do several different styles of rum.

It's a Jamaican-style rum.

- Make a line of vodkas.

Our regular vodka is just a clean, crisp, smooth vodka.

We make a product called Hempahol.

It is our vodka re-distilled through hemp seed, and then we also make a vodka infused with Ghost Pepper called Marci's Tears, perfect for that Bloody Mary.

- [Narrator] And the fact they continue to produce their liquor with the same attention their ancestors did is a testament to their success.

- We determine what we're gonna make our product out of by tasting the product.

- You know, we're not pumping out 5,000-gallon mashes.

We're pumping out 500-gallon mashes.

Each one of our barrels was hand-filled, each one of 'em was hand-dump, each of 'em was hand-proofed.

You get the same amount of blood, sweat and tear in every bottle.

- [Narrator] The Old Nick Williams Company now has a full bar.

- First time I had a whiskey sour here so I keep coming back for it.

- [Narrator] They offer tastings, tours and live music, but it's the pride in their heritage the Williams want guests to remember most.

- The history's awesome.

I mean, like where else do you find like letters from a president?

- I want our customers to appreciate and see how much work and love that we put into something that's been in our family for so long.

[country rock outro music] - Old Nick Williams Farm and Distillery is at 2675 Williams Road in Lewisville, and they're open daily at 11:00 AM.

To tour their distillery, give them a call at [336] 946-1165 or book online at oldnickwhiskey.com.