USA, TX: Witherspoon Distillery moving its operations to Old Town Lewisville
In the recent months the Old Town Lewisville is preparing for a move city officials say they are excited about. The homegrown Witherspoon Distillery is expanding its operations from 545 N. Cowan Ave., Denton Record Chronicle reported on 19 September.
James Kunke, a spokesman for the city, said he’s also excited to see the work being done at the new location.
“They are giving a beautiful facelift to a building that has sat vacant for many years, and they will serve as another draw for visitors to historic Old Town Lewisville,” Kunke said. “Witherspoon is a sponsor of Western Days, and we all hope they will be able to open in time for the festival, but whenever they open it will be a great addition for the area.”
The 15,300-square-foot building was constructed in 1988. It’s divided almost equally in thirds for liquor production, barrel storage and the bar and retail area.
Construction is slated to be completed by the Lewisville Western Days festival, which will take place on September 25-26, according to Quentin D. Witherspoon, master distiller and founder.
Natasha Dehart, head of sales and marketing and a founder, said the business partners looked at multiple locations across Lewisville.
“The city has been so supportive, so we really wanted to stay here. But there were a couple of other locations that just ended up not being feasible cost-wise or that things just didn’t work out,” Dehart said. “This property presented itself just kind of out of the blue.”
Dehart said that if the distillery opens by the festival she will consider it a soft opening, with an individual grand opening “about a month after the craziness from the festival dies down.”
“The city is very supportive of us going in here,” Dehart said. “We plan to be a part of pretty much every festival that happens in Old Town Lewisville.”
The company is scaling up significantly with new, customized equipment, Witherspoon said. Although the new location is only about 1 mile from where the distillery currently is, it will be closer to downtown Lewisville.
Witherspoon, a former Marine, founded the distillery with his business partners — Laurent Spamer and Ryan and Natasha Dehart — in 2011. He developed a passion for distilling spirits while in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, where he was one of five tasked with protecting American diplomats.
The Marines formed relationships with international diplomats who shared specialty beverages from across Europe with them, not anticipating the lack of refrigeration. At the time, Witherspoon was in charge of filtering drinking water from the Congo River. As the goods spoiled, Witherspoon decided to distil the wine into brandy and the beer into whiskey.
The business became licensed as a distillery in 2012 and has been pumping out whiskey and rum since. It is Witherspoon’s second attempt in the area; he tried to start a wine vineyard in Flower Mound in 1995.
In 2013, the Denton Record-Chronicle reported that founders were already working on plans for expansion, “looking at historic spaces in Lewisville to convert into a destination distillery, where the company will be able to provide tours, serve drinks and sell bottles — thanks to new legislation passed this session in the state Legislature.”
Witherspoon partnered with Glazer’s, an alcohol distribution company, and asked for its input on what customers wanted in a product instead of waiting to see whether anyone would buy the final version.
“We’re throughout the state of Texas now, and our expectation is that sometime in 2016, we should be able to bounce out of the state into a couple other states,” Witherspoon said. “We’re currently doing our first ever single-barrel project with Total Wine [liquor retailer], and we’re really excited about that, and we’re going to continue to experiment.”
The founders hope to experiment with brewing beer and already are looking at candidates to hire for helping with the brewing side, they said.
“Quentin’s passion has always been on the spirit side,” Natasha Dehart said. “Me and my husband have been home brewers. Our plan is to very soon acquire a brewer’s permit and start serving beer out of the bar. We’re hoping to offer our first beers later this fall.”
Distilling equipment also functions as brewing equipment. As a regular part of making whiskey, distillers essentially start making beer, adapting the process along the way. So the equipment setup easily can be modified for beer production.
“These guys are making beer all day long; it just doesn’t have hops and they end up distilling it,” Natasha Dehart said.
Right now, the company produces Witherspoon’s River Rum (a white rum), Bonfire (a cinnamon-infused rum), The Cross Timbers Single Malt Whiskey, Witherspoon’s Texas Straight Bourbon, River Rum Reserve (an aged rum only sold out of the distillery).
After the expansion, Natasha Dehart said the company plans to make and sell brandy, vodka and an agave spirit similar to tequila.
“Basically, we’ll be making any liquor type you’d find at a fully stocked bar only for sale in cocktails and stuff at our bar,” she said. “It will allow us to test the market and see if these are things we’d eventually want to take to a wider distribution.”
“We’re surprised by how much growth we’ve seen in the last few years,” Natasha Dehart said. “We hoped for it and planned for it, but when it actually happens, it’s exciting.”
23 September, 2015
