Old Dominick Distillery

Old Dominick Distillery is a grain-to-glass distiller in downtown Memphis, Tennessee, carrying a name first sold on South Front Street in 1866 and now distilled again just blocks from where it began.

History & Heritage

Domenico Canale founded D. Canale & Co. in Memphis in 1866, and among the company's earliest offerings was a whiskey he named Old Dominick, sold in ceramic jars and bottles. Canale died in 1919, shortly before Prohibition took the brand and nearly every other American distillery off the map. D. Canale & Co. carried on as a broader import and beverage business for decades under the family; in 1982, John D. Canale Jr. spun the food and beer divisions out as separate companies, which the family sold off in 1999 and 2010, respectively.

The whiskey name sat dormant until 2013, when fifth-generation descendants Chris and Alex Canale found an unopened late-1800s bottle of Old Dominick Toddy and decided to bring the brand back. They built a distillery at 305 S. Front St. in downtown Memphis, and in May 2017 opened Old Dominick Distillery, producing its first batch of Tennessee whiskey that year, an event the distillery marks as the first whiskey legally distilled in Memphis since Prohibition. Alex Castle serves as Master Distiller and Senior Vice President, the first woman to hold a Master Distiller title in Tennessee.

The Whiskey

Old Dominick's early modern-era releases leaned on sourced whiskey, primarily from MGP, while its own barrels matured. The distillery's current Straight Tennessee Whiskey and Bonded Tennessee Whiskey are made entirely from its own distillate, first released in November 2022. Both use a mash bill of 75% corn, 13% rye, and 12% malted barley, filtered through sugar maple charcoal before barreling under the Lincoln County Process required of Tennessee whiskey, then aged at least four years in West Tennessee white oak with a heavy No. 4 char. The Straight Tennessee Whiskey is bottled at 85 proof; the Bonded expression follows bottled-in-bond rules, one distilling season, one distiller, one distillery, at least four years in a federally bonded warehouse, at 100 proof.

The bourbon side runs on a high-rye mash bill. Old Dominick Cask Strength Bourbon Whiskey comes in at 114 proof with notes of rye spice, leather, dark chocolate, cinnamon, and caramel. Old Dominick 90.1 Proof Small Batch Bourbon Whiskey, named for the Memphis 901 area code, is the distillery's standard straight bourbon. The Huling Station line adds a 100-proof, four-year-old, No. 4 char Straight Bourbon built as an homage to 1866 Memphis whiskeys, alongside a Huling Station Blend that mixes it 50/50 with a Huling Station Straight Wheat Whiskey, also at 100 proof.

Why It Matters

Old Dominick Bonded Tennessee Whiskey won Best in Class and was voted Best Tennessee Whiskey at the 2023 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, validation for a distillery only a few years removed from its first legal batch. What sets Old Dominick apart is continuity: the name, the family, and the address all trace back to the same Memphis block where Domenico Canale started selling whiskey in 1866, making the modern distillery a direct revival rather than a licensed nostalgia brand.

Visiting the Distillery

Old Dominick offers daily tours at 305 S. Front St., Memphis, TN 38103. The standard "Making the Memphis Spirit" tour and tasting runs $15 for about an hour, including a curated spirits tasting, a walk through the grain-to-glass facility, and a Tennessee Whiskey Trail Passport stamp. Tours run Sunday through Thursday from noon to 5 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from noon to 6 p.m. A longer "Beyond the Barrel" experience, a 90-minute session with an expanded whiskey flight tasting, is also available for $50.