Cheers to Natchez

NATCHEZ — For nearly 300 years, Natchez has borne witness to scores of people traveling along the Mississippi River. The city’s deep-rooted history and famed tourism industry have made it unique in its own right, but something about its hodgepodge of locals and transients has given Natchez a reputation as a bit of a drinking town.

“Historically, the river served as the highway for people to travel, so Natchez always had a lot of people coming and going from out of town, it brought eclectic people to town, people with different viewpoints and thoughts,” said David Gammill, a Natchez native whose parents opened Fat Mama’s Tamales, a favorite of residents and tourists alike, in 1989. “I think Natchez has always been a drinking town because it’s had so many travelers for hundreds and hundreds of years.

“Some stayed, some didn’t,” he said. “Some people refer to it as a small New Orleans. It draws from so many places to get where we are today.”

Unlike New Orleans, with a population of more than 384,000, Natchez is home to about 15,500 people. Much like New Orleans, Natchez is complete with everything expected of a community with a rich heritage — shops, restaurants and historic lodging. And within about a 2-mile radius, there’s also a beer brewery, a rum distillery and a winery.

In 1979, Dr. Scott Galbreath Jr. turned his love of homemade muscadine wine into a family business and opened Old South Winery.

“They didn’t have money for wine, so if they wanted it, they had to make it themselves,” explained Scott Galbreath III about how his father’s grandmother taught him to make wine during the Great Depression.

“When he wanted to drink wine for his health in his ’40s, he started back making the muscadine wine for himself. The state of Mississippi passed the Native Wine Act around 1977 or 1978, so my dad told my mom, ‘Hey, let’s open up a winery.’”

Today, the winery sits just across the street from where both Galbreath men grew up near downtown Natchez, and it’s run almost entirely by the Galbreath family.

“Natchez has a lot of visitors, not only from the region but from all over the country. It’s a tourist town,” Galbreath said. “Most small wineries like ours are family-owned and -operated, and a lot of tourists like to come see that.”

Like the owners of many other local establishments, Old South Winery’s crew is proud of their Southern roots, and they make every effort to show that in their products. In 1979, a wine consultant advised the winery to produce mostly dry wines, but Dr. Galbreath recognized that his Mississippi clientele had a love of sweet tea and Coca-Cola, so he knew sweeter wines would be a bigger hit with his customers. But regional taste buds weren’t the only Southern tradition kept alive in the wine, even the ingredients come from the area.

“Muscadines are uniquely Southern, they only grow in the Deep South,” Galbreath said, noting that the vineyards from which their products come are in Mississippi. “It’s genuinely local.”

But the ability to buy and sell local spirits hasn’t always been around. Nearly 50 years ago, the people of Natchez — like all Mississippians — had to venture across state lines to buy alcohol until Prohibition was repealed in 1966. When that law changed, many say that the culture of the whole state changed. More recently, just before Vidalia, La., native Pat Miller and his wife, Lisa, moved to Natchez in 2012, the state’s law banning beer with more than 5 percent alcohol had changed, opening a door for them to introduce the city to Natchez Brewing Company.

“We had been living in Asheville, N.C., which is a big craft beer town, so that’s where we kind of got hooked into it,” Pat Miller said. “When we moved to Natchez, we really missed it and there wasn’t much craft beer to be found.”

So the Millers set to work on drafting a business plan and coming up with the money to open their brewery.

“The community has been unbelievably supportive,” Pat Miller said. “They’re taking possession, and they really care that they have a brewery in their own city. Craft beer has a lot to do with the community, and we want to make sure we represent Natchez in the craft beer world.”

More than 25 years ago, Doug Charboneau and his wife, Regina, tasted what he deemed “good rum” for the first time while on vacation, and, since then, joked about opening a distillery. After moving to various cities across the country, the couple settled in Regina’s hometown of Natchez, a place that, in their minds, would make a great home for a distillery. So, in August of 2014, Charboneau Rum Distillery was born.

“We believe that we’re the smallest town in America that has all three in one place,” Doug Charboneau said.

Charboneau Rum Distillery is next door to his wife’s restaurant, King’s Tavern.

“Because Natchez is a tourist destination, we knew that traffic was there so we’re just tapping into it,” Charboneau said. “We see every kind of person because Natchez is an everything kind of town. Young couples getting away for the first time since they’ve had a baby, parents of teenagers getting away for the weekend, retirees who can do what they want, conventions on the weekend.”

Like Old South Winery, Charboneau Distillery uses products that are local to the region to make its product.

“It has to do with availability and accessibility of product — raw sugar and molasses,” Doug Charboneau said. “Sugar cane is grown below Interstate 10 because frost is more rare in the South, so in about a 2½-hour drive, we can go to a sugar mill and buy raw sugar and molasses.”

Since 2001, Natchez has been home to a food and wine festival that brings together drinks and food from across the region.

“It’s a very big deal,” Charboneau said. “It’s a well-attended weekend, and I think 80 to 90 percent of their ticket sales were probably local.”

For now, the local alcohol-makers are doing some teaming up, like aging beers in a rum barrel.

“We’re hoping to do some partnership sometime in the near future,” Miller said. “Personally, I think, as a community that doesn’t have that much industry, it really is about tourism. We want people to come in and stay a weekend, and we want to make sure they come back. Everybody is working together to make sure people have a really good Natchez experience.”

“I think the brewery, distillery, and winery add value to Natchez; it’s in the cultural value in that if you go somewhere, those things are popular and it allows visitors to get a sense of the place,” Gammill said.

“Having different mindsets, people, ethnicities, there’s a lot of variation in what people like and want. Beer, wine, rum — those all appeal to a segment of personal likes of the community here but also to the tourists who come to view an antebellum home or visit friends and family.”

STORY Mary Margaret Halford
PHOTOGRAPHY Melanie Thortis, Eli Baylis
ILLUSTRATIONS Claiborne Cooksey