Lake Leelanau’s Northern Latitudes Distillery is finally getting its new 12,000-square-foot production and tasting room facility.

According to Mark Moseler, who co-owns Northern Latitudes with his wife Mandy, the distillery has outgrown its current home at 112 East Philip Street. For years, the Moselers have been planning to build a new facility at 7159 East Duck Lake Road, which will triple the distillery’s footprint and provide some much-needed extra space for storage and operations. Now crews have officially broken ground, with completion slated for some time next year.

It's been a long road to get to this moment: Moseler tells the Leelanau Ticker that he and Mandy first started dreaming up the new facility “a few years ago,” motivated by a handful of factors. For one thing, the distillery currently leases its East Philip Street location and the Moselers are interested in owning their own building. Moseler also says Northern Latitudes has been brushing up against the constraints of its current facility for ages, with the building’s 4,000 square feet no longer big enough for efficient day-to-day operations.

“We’ve gotten really good at what we call ‘playing Tetris,’” Moseler laughs, explaining the distillery doesn’t have enough space to store everything it has on hand – be it barrels of spirits or empty bottles waiting to be filled. 

Fatigue over the constant Tetris situation prompted the Moselers to purchase land on East Duck Lake Road, just a tenth of a mile down the street from their current location. But getting the ball rolling on the new facility has been what Moseler calls “an odyssey” of setbacks and delays. This year, construction was supposed to begin in April; it didn’t kick off until late September.

“With bigger project like this, there’s always delays,” Moseler says. “You have delays in getting people lined up to do the work for you, because everyone’s so busy. And then you have delays getting all the permits and paperwork lined up. You can’t just put a shovel in the ground and start going. It’s a commercial enterprise, and you have to go through everything from getting well approvals and soil erosion permits and building approvals, to working with utilities like Consumers and DTE.”

The good news is that most of those items have now been checked off the to-do list. Moseler says Northern Latitudes is still waiting on final approval for its building plans from the Leelanau County Building Department. “But, because we have our soil erosion permit, they’ve given us permission to start digging and getting stuff prepped for actual construction,” he adds.

Overseeing that construction is Keen Technical Solutions, a Traverse City-based energy efficiency consulting company that also does construction management work. From the start, Moseler says, Northern Latitudes has been committed to making its new facility as sustainable and eco-friendly as possible, hence the Keen partnership. Last December, Leelanau Energy announced the distillery as the recipient of a $10,000 grant that will help the business “incorporate as many sustainable practices as possible” into the new facility, including solar panels, a geothermal heat pump system, publicly accessible EV charging stations, and a carbon-capture system for sequestering the carbon dioxide produced from distillery fermentations. Northern Latitudes is also working with the Cedar-based Inhabitect to add a green roof.

While the Moselers’ main goal with new facility is to increase productivity and efficiency, moving from a 4,000-square-foot building to a 12,000-square-foot one will open up plenty of other doors, too. Moseler says customers can expect to see the distillery get a little more experimental with the spirits it decides to put into production.

“I think we do pretty well coming out with new products,” Moseler says, pointing to a lineup that includes standard spirits like whiskey, vodka, and gin as well as a full line of flavored liqueurs. “But it's a test when you're trying to do multiple products in a small environment. There are tons of ideas, but when you don't have a lot of space, you can fall into the habit of saying, ‘Oh, we’re going to put that on hold until we can work through what we already have in storage.’ Now, I can say, ‘Hey, let’s give this new thing a try,’ and know we have the space to do so.”

What Northern Latitudes won’t be doing – at least in the short term – is drastically increasing the amount of product it makes. Moseler says the distillery is planning on moving its “relatively small” distilling system to the new facility, noting that “capacity-wise, it fits us just fine.” 

But Moseler also isn’t ruling out future growth. One option the distillery may start entertaining soon is a wider distribution model, which could take Northern Latitudes products from a very regionalized footprint to a statewide one – if not beyond. The new facility, Moseler says, gives the business the freedom to consider those types of possibilities.

“Right now, we’re only running our still during the daytime hours,” Moseler notes. “Could we add second and third shifts and start increasing production? Certainly, we could do that. The still can run 24 hours a day if it needs to; that’s what it’s built for. So, we've really always had the possibility of ramping things up just with the equipment we have, and now, we’ll have the space to do that, too.”

Pictured: Renderings of the new Northern Latitudes facility, courtsey of Mark Moseler.