Durham Distillery is set to launch an £800,000 Durham city centre base this summer - including an underground distilling room and visitor centre.
Founder Jon Chadwick said he wants customers to get "up close and personal" as the location, within the Prince Bishops Shopping Centre, will host a visitors centre and host cocktail making workshops.
The project has been about three years in the making - during which time Mr Chadwick has been searching for the right venue in central Durham for his urban distillery and has run a pre-sales campaign for the distillery's single malt whisky.
Read more: Royal Quays to launch marketplace concept - and small sellers are urged to get on board
Discussions with the Prince Bishops Shopping Centre led to an agreement and Durham Distillery will occupy the former Royal Bank of Scotland building and a 5,000 sqft underground distilling room, as well as space for customers to have a drink, take part in classes and take part in tours.
There will be a ticket office on the ground floor followed by a two-storey spiral staircase that will take customers under the streets of Durham to the bar and production room.
Mr Chadwick said: "I think it'll be really good for people to come and see the process from start to finish. They'll see every ingredient, every bit of kit we use and they can get a greater appreciation of what craft spirits are all about.
"We're bringing something a bit different to the North East and very, very different to Durham. People will be going shopping on the cobbled streets of Durham with our distillery underneath them."
The firm's existing stills - including its gin and development stills - will move from Riverside Industrial Estate in Langley Park to the city centre site in the coming weeks. A further two custom-built 1,100 litre stills will arrive in days.
Mr Chadwick says there is still work to be done on the premises but is aiming for a soft launch in June, before making tours and classes available the following month. The distillery's proximity to the Durham's UNESCO World Heritage Site has made planning and building work complex.
He added: "It's been a long, slow process but we're on the last lap now. This was empty high street retail that's been re-purposed. One of the biggest stories around is where high street shopping is going and how we restructure it so it has a range of things to make people want to come and shop in person, rather than online.
"This is a chance for the North East to say 'we're in the lead with this' as nobody in London has done this yet."
The distillery currently employs three staff and with the opening of the new site, Mr Chadwick intends to grow the team to include shop, bar and distilling staff.
While there have been a number of craft gin distilleries launched in recent years, Mr Chadwick says Durham Distillery is closer in style to US operators such as Kings County Distillery in Brooklyn or Chichibu Distillery in Japan as opposed to Scottish distilleries on Speyside or the West Coast.
He said: "We were the North East's first small batch craft distillery and we've just passed the ninth anniversary of setting up the company, and the eighth anniversary of selling our first bottle of gin. We've been working on a project that's been going on for about three or four years."
The idea for Durham Distillery was born out of a train journey Mr Chadwick made to the US East Coast ten years ago.
He said: "I went all the way through Boston, Cambridge, Providence and New Jersey - all those kind of Ivy League towns. All of those pretty Ivy League towns like Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Brown all had gorgeous craft micro-distilleries, making mainly bourbon.
"I just thought that would be a brilliant business model to bring to the North East, and to Durham, where I'm originally from. I think Durham is the nearest the UK's got to a Harvard, a Yale or a Princeton. It's all boats on the river and college scarfs."
