Copper Run Distillery

In the Ozark hills near Table Rock Lake, Copper Run Distillery has been cooking, fermenting, and distilling grain into whiskey since 2009, using a single 140-gallon direct-fire copper pot still and limestone-filtered water drawn straight from the surrounding Ozarks aquifer. It is a small operation by design, hand-crafted in small batches rather than scaled for volume, and that scale shows in the level of control the distillers keep over every run from mash to barrel.

History & Heritage

Jim Blansit founded Copper Run Distillery in 2009 on family property in Walnut Shade, Missouri, building the business around traditional Ozark distilling methods passed down through generations in the region. The distillery earned early recognition quickly, taking a Silver Medal from the American Distiller's Institute in 2010 for its Ozark Mountain Moonshine and barrel-aged whiskey, a strong result for a distillery barely a year old.

On July 27, 2018, Keith Hock and Jason Iacobucci acquired the distillery's assets from Jim White and founder Jim Blansit, forming Copper Run Enterprises LLC to operate the business going forward. The original building and land in Walnut Shade stayed in the Blansit family, who leased the property back to the new ownership group, a detail that kept the distillery's roots literally in place even as its operators changed. Keith and Lois Hock now manage in-house operations, with AJ Womack serving as Distiller and General Manager alongside distiller Pat Gibbons. As of July 2026, Copper Run Distillery is owned and operated by Keith Hock and Jason Iacobucci through Copper Run Enterprises LLC.

In September 2021 the distillery relocated from its original Walnut Shade site to a new address at 14720 Business 13 in Branson West, Missouri, reopening to the public in March 2022. The move gave the operation a larger, more accessible home in the Table Rock Lake tourist corridor without abandoning the small-batch, family-rooted identity the distillery built its first decade on.

The Whiskey

Copper Run's core lineup runs through the still on that single 140-gallon copper pot, with everything cooked, fermented, and distilled on the grain rather than sourced. Ozark Mountain Moonshine, the distillery's un-aged corn whiskey, follows a traditional 80 percent corn, 20 percent wheat sour mash formula. Copper Run Small Batch Whiskey is built from a corn, wheat, and malted barley mash bill and carries the Silver Medal Spirit and Certified Craft Distilled Spirit designations from the ADI International Spirits Competition. The distillery also produces a rye whiskey and a malted barley whiskey finished with one percent port wine, a small but deliberate touch that sets it apart from a standard barrel-finished release. In October 2022 the distillery released Small Batch Honey, blending its small batch whiskey with locally sourced raw honey, a release recognized in Springfield Business Journal's 2023 roundup of the "Coolest Things Made in the Ozarks." Barrels are made from Missouri white oak sourced out of Lebanon, Missouri, and the distillery treats aging as a conditioning and flavoring step layered onto spirits that are already built to be smooth straight off the still, rather than a fix for rough new-make spirit. A White Rum made from blackstrap molasses rounds out the non-whiskey side of production, and bourbon is also part of the current inventory-building program.

Why It Matters

Copper Run represents a specific strain of Missouri craft distilling: hyper-local, grain-to-glass, and built around a still small enough that every batch gets hands-on attention. The Signature Barrel Program extends that philosophy directly to customers, who can take part in the mashing and distillation process, choose their own custom mash bill, and walk away with a barrel that ages for three years under their name. Few distilleries anywhere in the region offer that level of hands-on access to the actual production process rather than just a tasting-room experience.

Visiting the Distillery

The tasting room at the Branson West location is open Tuesday through Saturday, from noon to 5:00 p.m. Guided tours run during open hours and walk visitors through the production process behind the scenes, followed by complimentary tastings of the distillery's spirits in the tasting room.