Chattanooga Whiskey Co.

In a city where distilling was outlawed for nearly a century, Chattanooga Whiskey Co. had to prove its own whiskey could exist before it could prove it was good. Founded in 2011 by Tim Piersant and Joe Ledbetter, the company spent its early years sourcing whiskey from MGP of Indiana while lobbying to overturn Chattanooga's Prohibition-era distilling ban. That legal fight paid off, and today Chattanooga Whiskey distills every drop it bottles from two facilities in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee.

History & Heritage

Chattanooga had been dry to distilling since Prohibition, so when Piersant and Ledbetter set out to build a whiskey company there in 2011, they had no legal path to actually make whiskey in their own city. They launched instead with sourced bourbon from MGP/LDI of Indiana, bottled as 1816 Reserve and 1816 Cask, while pushing to change Tennessee and local law. Ledbetter ended his working relationship with the company in 2014. The breakthrough came in March 2015, when Chattanooga Whiskey opened the Experimental Distillery at 1439 Market Street, the city's first legal distillery in generations. A larger production facility, the Riverfront Distillery at 890 Riverfront Parkway, began operations in 2017 to scale up capacity. By August 2019, the company had phased out sourced whiskey entirely and was distributing distillate made entirely in-house, closing the loop on a founding promise it took eight years to keep. Tim Piersant remains Founder and CEO, as of July 2026.

The Whiskey

Chattanooga Whiskey's identity rests on a style it calls Tennessee High Malt, a four-grain mash bill of yellow corn, malted rye, caramel malt, and honey malt that pushes malt character further than a typical bourbon recipe. Fermentation runs an extended seven days under temperature control, using a malt-forward yeast strain chosen to draw out the grain's character rather than rush through it. The whiskey ages more than two years in new charred oak, split between barrels charred to a #4 specification and barrels slow-toasted before being charred to a #3 specification, a two-track aging approach the distillery uses to build complexity. Production splits across two sites: the Experimental Distillery runs a 100-gallon system with one cooker, three fermenters, and a Vendome hybrid pot/column still, plus a separate 100-gallon copper pot still used for small experimental batches, often with double distillation. The flagship expression, Chattanooga Whiskey 91, goes through an additional finishing step in a 4,000-gallon charred white oak Solera barrel that is never fully emptied, so each release carries character from everything that aged in it before. Cask 111 is the cask-strength counterpart, and Chattanooga Whiskey 99 Rye applies the same high-malt approach to a rye mash bill.

Why It Matters

The results have drawn consistent recognition. Chattanooga Whiskey was named Best American Craft Producer at the 2026 World Whiskies Awards and won Icons of Whisky Craft Producer of the Year, both America and Global, at Whisky Magazine's 2023 World Whiskies Awards. At the Ascot Awards, Chattanooga Whiskey 99 Rye and Cask 111 took Double Platinum in 2021, and in 2023 Chattanooga Whiskey 91 and Cask 111 both took Double Platinum, with 91 named Best in Category for Craft Whiskey and Cask 111 named Best in Category for Craft Bourbon. The earlier sourced expressions had their own run of medals, with 1816 Reserve and 1816 Cask winning Double Gold and Gold at the San Francisco World Spirit Awards in 2016, plus Gold honors at the American Distilling Institute Spirit Competition and International Whisky Competition that same year. The Sentinel Room's Reserve Whiskey Library carries Chattanooga Whiskey Bourbon Whiskey and Chattanooga Whiskey Rye, giving guests a direct line to a distillery built specifically to prove Tennessee whiskey could mean something beyond one famous name in Lynchburg.

Visiting the Distillery

The Experimental Distillery at 1439 Market Street in Chattanooga is open to the public daily from 11 AM to 8 PM, with guided tours running about an hour and priced at $18.00 per person, including a tasting flight of award-winning whiskey. Reservations are strongly encouraged and can be booked online. The Riverfront Distillery, the company's larger production facility, is not open to the public.