Helping Hands: Call Family Distillers Give Community Free Sanitizer
Seven generations of Calls have been in the whiskey business
WILKESBORO-The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since the announcement. Back in March, Brian Call and his wife Laura decided to create a new product at Call Family Distillers and give it away. Seeing Wilkes County residents running low on sanitizer and stores struggling to keep it in stock, the couple decided the best way to help their community was to start producing it themselves.
“We could have sold it to companies, but I didn’t feel right selling,” Brian said. Besides, the seventh-generation distiller said, this wasn’t about making money. “We’re just trying to lend a helping hand. Hospitals, fire departments, whoever needs it, we want to help.”
And help they have. The Wilkes County Sheriff’s Department, Wilkes County EMS, the NC Highway Patrol, North Wilkesboro and Wilkesboro police departments have all received shipments of sanitizer from the distillery, along with multiple fire stations, police departments and hospitals in several other counties. It’s not just limited to essential services either. Brian and Laura are giving out bottles to anyone who needs it.
“We’ve given away gallons on top of gallons,” Brian said. “If somebody needs it, they can call and we’ll have some ready for them to pick up.”
Searching for Sanitizer
Sanitizer is in demand right now because of the COVID-19 shutdown. As of April 20, there were 6,764 cases reported in North Carolina, with four in Wilkes County. And as is usually the case, something your mother and grandmother repeatedly said to you growing up is helpful here. The best way to prevent infection is by washing your hands with soap and water. As for what type of soap? Well, according to the Centers for Disease Control, you kill the most bacteria with alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
But you can’t use just any type of alcohol to make sanitizer. It has to be really strong. Pouring Coors Light over your hands won’t do the job. The CDC says your sanitizer mix needs to be at least 60 percent alcohol to be effective.
“Alcohol-based hand sanitizers can quickly reduce the number of microbes on hands,” says a CDC report. “Hand sanitizers without 60 to 90 percent alcohol may not work equally well for many types of germs; and merely reduce the growth of germs rather than kill them outright.”
That’s where operations like Call Family Distillers step in. Most already had ethanol on hand from the regular distilling process. They just needed to stock up with some glycerin and hydrogen peroxide, among other things, to make the product.
A Family Tradition
It would be fair to say whiskey runs in the blood for Brian Call. The seventh-generation distiller can trace his heritage back to the 1850s, where Rev. Daniel Call did more than preach a sermon at the Lutheran church in Lynchburg, Tennessee. He also ran the local general store. If you walked out behind the store, you’d be able to buy homemade whiskey Call had distilled. It stayed that way until after the Civil War, when Daniel’s wife and congregation gave him a choice: give up the whiskey or give up the church. He chose to stay with the church and sold his distilling operation to a young man who had been living on Daniel’s farm, one Jasper Newton “Jack” Daniel.
Forty years after that, the Call family had settled in Wilkes County, North Carolina. It was here the family continued to develop their own moonshine recipes, where Brian’s grandfather Willie Simon Call was arrested and charged by federal authorities for delivering that moonshine. And it was here in the 1940s where Brian’s father Willie Clay Call became a legend.
“I like to say the Call family hands down recipes as traditions,” Brian’s wife Laura Call said. “It’s a family business. At the age of 9, Willie Clay Call was working with the family and by the age of 14, he was uncatchable.”
Uncatchable. That was the label Willie Clay was given by federal ATF agents who tried and failed to catch him on a moonshine run. Starting around the age of 14, Willie Clay delivered moonshine on a regular basis, avoiding and in many cases just outrunning federal revenue agents using cars like his 1961 Chrysler New Yorker. This was the business Brian Call grew up in, helping his dad make liquor. This was also what he chose as a profession, taking a job with Budweiser. And after 20 years with the company, when the opportunity came to run his own distillery, Brian took it.
“It’s kind of like a drug,” Brian said of the distilling business. “I just like doing it. I like making whiskey and apple brandy and you’ve got to love what you do.”
Launched in 2013, Call Family Distillers is very much a do-it-yourself operation. Brian designed all of the distillery’s equipment himself. That includes “The Bull,” a 2,100 gallon direct steam injection still, the largest of its kind operating in North Carolina. Family members help with the day-to-day operations, the marketing and the online presence. Now they’re helping with the distillery’s hand sanitizer project.
People can call the distillery at (336)-990–0708 to request a bottle and then come by the location at 1611 Industrial Drive in Wilkesboro to pick it up. Brian and Laura both said the distillery plans to keep this going as long as it’s needed.
“We’re going to roll with it,” Brian said. “Right now, the FDA has given us a permit to do this through June 30. If we save one person’s life, it’s worth it.”
