Maine Craft Distilling

Maine Craft Distilling is a Portland, Maine spirits producer founded in 2012 that makes small-batch, "farm-to-flask" distilled spirits and canned ready-to-drink cocktails. Its bottled portfolio has included gin, whiskey, rum, vodka and blueberry moonshine; flagship products are Blueshine Liqueur, a 35% ABV liqueur made from wild Maine blueberries infused into malt spirit and sweetened with Maine maple syrup, and Fifty Stone Single Malt Whiskey, produced from local barley, peated with local peat, fermented with wild yeast and matured at the Portland distillery.

In 2018 the company extended the brand into sparkling ready-to-drink cocktails built on its own spirits, produced and canned at the Portland facility. The RTD line centers on Blueshine Lemonade, a 7% ABV blueberry lemonade cocktail sold in slimline 12 oz cans as 4-packs and 8-packs, alongside Cranberry Island Cocktail, Maine Mule and variety packs, plus a newer 7% ABV no-sugar-added "Tasty Beverage" range. Ingredients cited for the canned line include MCD potato spirit, cane sugar, natural botanicals and carbonated water.

The company historically combined production with hospitality, operating the Maine Craft Distilling Public House at 123 Washington Avenue with a tasting room, gastropub menu and regular live music. That venue, open since 2017, closed permanently in early 2025, after which the business focused entirely on its canned cocktail operations while continuing retail distribution across Maine and the wider Northeast.

Founding story

Maine Craft Distilling was founded in Portland, Maine in 2012 by Luke Davidson and Fred Farber, with Davidson serving as founder and chief distiller. Davidson later took the distillery's best-selling bar cocktails and began packaging them in cans, which became the basis of the company's ready-to-drink line.

Business model

Maine Craft Distilling manufactures and sells bottled spirits and canned ready-to-drink cocktails, distributing through partner wholesalers into retail chains, grocery and on-premise accounts. Until 2025 it also operated a direct-to-consumer public house and tasting room at its Portland distillery, serving food, craft cocktails and live music. Reported blended margins across product lines were 46% as of the 2021 offering, with bottled spirits retailing at roughly $30-$50 and canned cocktails at $10-$14 for a four-pack and about $19 for an eight-pack.

Revenue comes from transactional sales of alcoholic beverages: bottled spirits and canned ready-to-drink cocktails sold through distributors and retailers, historically supplemented by on-site food and beverage sales at the company's public house and tasting room. Reported revenue was $2.6M in 2020, which the company described as profitable.

Traction

The company reported $2.6M of revenue in 2020, described as profitable, after growing revenue by about $1M year over year, with 14% growth in restaurant and retail, 19% in distilled spirits and 122% in RTD cocktails; Q1 2021 RTD growth was reported at 352% year over year. Distribution covered 10 states and ten distributors in 2021, including chains such as BJ's and Total Wine, expanding to 12 northeastern states by 2025, when the company expected to sell upwards of 120,000 cases of canned cocktails over the following twelve months and cited Nielsen data showing 32% revenue growth. Headcount was reported at 75 employees as of February 2024.

Latest developments

In 2025 the company named Joseph Swanson, a 20-year beverage-alcohol industry veteran previously with Harpoon Brewery, Allagash Brewing, Cold River and Martignetti Companies, as CEO, with founder Luke Davidson remaining in a creative leadership and operations role. The same period saw the launch of a no-sugar-added 7% ABV canned cocktail range and the permanent closure, in March 2025, of the Washington Avenue public house and tasting room, with the 10,000-plus square foot space to be listed for lease and company attention shifting entirely to canned cocktails.