Free tastings of their spirits, tasty cocktails & pet-friendly inside and out, there’s a lot to like about End of Days Distillery in Wilmington, NC.
After getting back from our month-long trip to Mauritius and South Africa, Shae and I drove down from Virginia to North Carolina – the 31st state on our 50 state road trip. Our first stop in NC was Wilmington, a city Shae had visited last year with her mom while I was away and loved, so she wanted to return and have me get to check it out too.
Only a 5 minute drive from our great Airbnb was End of Days Distillery, so we went there one afternoon to check it out.
There’s a good-sized patio area outside where people took advantage of the nice weather that day (the photo below was taking when we stopped by on our way out of town before they opened).
Inside there’s a wide variety of seating options, from bar stools to couches to armchairs and more. The photo below was taken from the front of the building – there’s more seating off to the right of the bar which is at the back.
A great feature of End of Days is that they offer free tastings of their spirits in the Mercantile-signed interior building in the photo above. That also serves as their gift shop where they have all kinds of cool-looking branded t-shirts, hats, drinking glasses and much more.
I was still recovering from food poisoning the first time we visited, so I decided not to do the tasting and offered to be Shae’s designated driver in case she wanted any cocktails after. The friendly server gave pours of their different spirits from vodka to gin to rum to whiskey and more.
One of their more interesting-looking spirits was their barrel rested gin. This gin is rested in oak barrels and has already won several awards at spirits competitions.
After doing a tasting, Shae decided to try their 5th Symphony Cocktail from the bar. This contains their Port of Entry Rum, pomegranate, dark cherry, winter spice blend and vanilla. I tried a tiny bit and it definitely had that winter kind of taste due to the spice blend and Shae enjoyed her drink.
We’d seen online that they were pet-friendly, so we’d brought Truffles along to join us. That’s just one of the great things about End of Days Distillery – dogs are allowed both out on their patio and inside the bar/tasting room itself.
I’d been sad to miss out on the tastings, so when I was feeling better a few days later we returned. Their spirits were indeed as good as Shae had said. I’m not a big fan of gin, but I tried two or three of their gins and they were much better than I’d been expecting as the juniper/Christmas tree flavor was much more mellow.
That was helped by some of the ways they’d prepared their gin, such as the barrel rested gin I mentioned earlier and their fascinatingly-colored Luna Bloom which is gin infused with butterfly pea flower.
When we stayed at Kinkaider Brewing Co in Broken Bow, NE, in addition to their excellent beers we enjoyed trying out their canned cocktails. End of Days Distillery has their own line of ready-to-drink cocktails too and our tastings included their Hurricane and Cargo Mule.
I’m more of a whiskey drinker nowadays and so I was pleased to see that they had a bourbon whiskey. This was very good, although I didn’t buy a bottle as I’d gotten quite a few bottles for Christmas which I hadn’t had a chance to work on as we’d been overseas.
After I’d finished the tasting, we decided to stay for a drink. There were several interesting-sounding cocktails on their cocktail menu…
…but I decided to go for their bourbon whiskey neat. Shae on the other hand ordered their End of Days Elixir which contains their Port of Entry Vodka, ginger lemon grass & lime, elderflower cordial and cava.
If you get hungry while having some drinks, from Wednesday to Saturday End of Days has a different food truck on site each day. The second time we visited it was Wheelz Pizza which seems to be a highly-rated pizzeria in Wilmington, although we didn’t get dinner from there ourselves.
Final Thoughts
Shae and I (and Truffles!) really enjoyed visiting End of Days Distillery a couple of times while visiting Wilmington. Their spirits are tasty, they have friendly staff, they’re pet-friendly inside and out and the place just had an all-round good vibe. If we lived in Wilmington, I could imagine it becoming our local.
Address
End of Days Distillery, 1815 Castle St, Wilmington, NC 28403
Wow! This is so amazing! Thank you so much, I had no idea! I can’t wait