America had a long history of functioning alcholism, starting with one of our most infamous forefathers, President George Washington. Back in the day, Washington made the most whisky in the country. When Prohibition came around, it messed up the steady buzzes of the repressed Victorians and fueled rebellion amongst the most hedonistic of flappers.
Only recently have craft distilleries come back into the forefront of American drinking culture. Because if there's one thing we've learned as Americans, it's that we like to have choices.
From local to loco, here are 15 of the Coolest Distillleries in the United States.
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15. Sound Spirits
14. Tuthilltown Spirits
13. Balcones
City: Waco, Texas
Address: 212 S 17th St.
Website: balconesdistilling.com
Normally, you can’t mess with Texas, but Prohibition did making Balcones the first Texas whiskey producer after that era. In 2008, Chip Tate started Balcones in a welding shop under a bridge to revamp a non-existent Texas whisky tradition. Now Whisky Magazine is calling them the 2012 Craft Whiskey Distillery of the Year and they’re celebrating their 5th birthday soon with an exclusive single barrel bourbon. On top of that, Balcones has a special reserve single-malt whisky, a corn whisky made from Hopi blue corn called True Blue, the “world’s first wood-smoked whisky” a/k/a “a Texas campfire in a bottle,” and more. Balcones proves that instead of there just being oil in them there fields, there’s whisky. And lots of it.