We Made It Behind the Bar

There are certain milestones when you're building a distillery that just hit a little differently.

This was one of them.

For the first time, we walked into a local restaurant and saw Grove & Grain bottles sitting behind the bar.

Our first restaurant placement was at The Monkey Bar in Homosassa—and once we knew the bottles had arrived, there was really only one thing left to do.

We had to go order a drink.

Our First Local Placement

Until this point, most people had experienced Grove & Grain by finding us at a local market or event and meeting us face-to-face.

Seeing our bottles behind another business's bar was different.

It meant someone could walk into one of their favorite local spots, order a cocktail, and discover Grove & Grain without us even being there.

For a small craft distillery, that's a pretty exciting feeling.

And we couldn't have asked for a more fitting place for one of our first bottles to land.

Grove & Grain in Homosassa

Homosassa is already a big part of our story.

Our Yulee Mill Silver Rum was inspired by the historic Yulee Sugar Mill ruins just down the road and is made from 100% Florida sugarcane. Now that same rum is being poured in the community that inspired it.

That's the kind of full-circle moment we hoped for when we started building Grove & Grain around real Florida places and stories.

So naturally, we headed to The Monkey Bar to see it for ourselves.

There were our bottles, sitting on the bar.

And outside?

One of the best views in Old Florida.

Drinks With a View

We grabbed a cocktail and headed out to the water to take in the view of Monkey Island.

Boats passing by. Florida sunshine. Palm trees. Monkeys on their own little island in the middle of the Homosassa River.

It's hard to imagine a better backdrop for celebrating our first restaurant placement.

There will hopefully be a lot more Grove & Grain bottles appearing behind bars across Florida in the years ahead.

But there will only ever be one first.

Thanks to The Monkey Bar for giving Grove & Grain a place behind theirs.

We'll raise a glass to that.

Old Florida, Rediscovered.

Drink Like a Floridian!