Blue Note is more than a good Memphis bourbon — and that’s backed up by gold medals and best-of lists. It’s also a homegrown success story that sure, maybe could’ve happened anywhere, but happened to happen here.

With a law degree from Ole Miss, native Memphian McCauley Williams came home and went to work in mergers and acquisitions for the largest law firm in the state. Four years ago, he traded the promise of a corner office for the pursuit of a sacred spirit:

Bourbon.

Listen to B.R. Distilling’s McCauley Williams on the Sound Bites podcast

When Pyramid Vodka went out of business, its equipment was going on the block so Williams gathered his investors, jumped in and B.R. Distilling Co. was born; the initials stand for Big River.

“Entrepreneurship really excited me,” Williams said.

In 2018, he managed to move roughly 800 cases. Next year, four years after he first bottled Blue Note, Williams’ yield won’t be double that. It won’t be triple, it won’t even be tenfold: Try 100 times.

Merge and acquire that.

Today, Williams, 32, is running a whiskey business in a utilitarian North Memphis warehouse with no sign on the door, putting out award-winning bourbon and rye whiskey named on “best” lists in publications such as Forbes, Food & Wine, Wine Enthusiast, Robb Report, Cowboys & Indians and Whisky Advocate.

Earlier this year, Blue Note took home a gold and three double gold medals at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, the oldest and largest such competition in the world, and Blue Note Juke Joint received an impressive 93 points in Wine Enthusiast.

Juke Joint got the gold, and the double golds went to Blue Note Premium Small Batch 9-year, Blue Note Single Barrel Select, and Riverset Rye Single Barrel. Riverset is a secondary brand and has so far released only rye, but that changes next month when Riverset Rum hits the market.

“It’s a Venezuelan rum that we aged in our rye barrels,” Williams said.

And sure, he’s excited about it. Distillers gotta distill, after all. But it’s Blue Note Crossroads that really has his attention at the moment. It’s the latest release, a 4-year-old bourbon finished with toasted French oak staves.

Ryan Trimm, chef/owner at Sweet Grass, has been a fan from the start — he bought a barrel of Blue Note Single Barrel Select 9-year in 2018.

“Crossroads is very good,” Trimm said. “It’s got a nice oaky finish that I love, but I like that it still has a bite to it. Some bourbons lose that when they’re finished outside the barrel, but this isn’t. It’s got a great balance.”

The whiskey is not mashed in Memphis; it might come from Tennessee, Indiana or Kentucky, but the barrels are stored here and the bourbon and rye are crafted here.

There’s one 4,000-gallon container used for blending and several smaller tanks that vary in size but are about 500-600 gallons.

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For a recent batch of Crossroads, product manager Dougan Grimes oversaw the process that started by pouring barrels of bourbon in the smaller tanks, finishing with the staves, then combining 72 barrels in the massive tank.

From there, “it’s where the Memphis water comes in,” Williams said.

Over a week or so, water is added to the mix and when it reaches the right taste and alcohol by volume — Crossroads is 100 proof — it’s put in smaller containers then bottled by hand.

Everything is hands-on. Earlier this week, three lines of workers were bottling different products: Blue Note Crossroads Bourbon, Riverset Rye and a private label bourbon.

First the bottles are filled from a spigot, then passed down the line where they’re visually inspected to make sure they contain the right amount. If it’s short, there’s a guy with a pitcher of whiskey who tops it off. Too much and the surplus goes in the pitcher.

Labels are applied by hand, the bottles are capped and after the plastic goes around the seal, a worker uses a heat gun to make it shrink and seal.

It’s low tech, and it’s efficient.

“We’re bottling craft spirits,” Williams said.

There’s even a rack of barrels there for playing around a little, for experimenting.

A local honey producer aged honey in a used rye barrel, and when it was emptied, the Blue Note folks filled it with rye again. It’s been in there almost a year and soon they’ll bottle it. There are sherry, port and madeira barrels, either full and aging or waiting to be filled.

The products, which were in a handful of local liquor stores and restaurants three years ago, are now in 15 states and the plan is simple: Keep growing. B.R. Distilling is at a crossroads even as its bourbon of the same name is hitting shelves in new markets and expansion to new states is on the horizon.

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“We went from a brand that didn’t even exist to being in the top 10% of all craft spirits, and that growth mostly happened in the last year,” said company CFO Logan Welk.

Williams named his company after the Mississippi River and flagship product to honor the Memphis blues. Crossroads, of course, pays homage to Robert Johnson’s legendary deal with the devil at the intersection of Highway 61 and Highway 49 in the Delta. Yes, there is dispute over the actual crossroads, but as the story is about a man selling his soul in exchange for great musical talent, does it matter?

Perhaps. Maybe location matters, maybe the devil is in the details, after all. Williams believes that his success is because of his hometown.

“People here like to lift you up, they like to get behind you, to support you,” he said. “Memphis is a great place.”