Washington Distilling Company

In the river town of Washington, Missouri, about an hour west of St. Louis, The Washington Distilling Company blends and finishes small-batch bourbons, ryes, gins, and vodkas out of a tasting room at 622 Jefferson Street. It is not a from-grain distillery in the traditional sense. Its craft is sourcing, aging, and finishing: taking whiskey distilled elsewhere and giving it a distinct second life in Missouri oak, rum casks, and sherry butts.

History & Heritage

The business was incorporated on March 7, 2019, and operates today as a project of Farm and Spirit Inc., owned by Richard J. Anders, who owns both the distillery and its parent company. Rather than building a large-scale mash-in, ferment, distill operation from day one, Washington Distilling Company built its identity around blending and barrel finishing, a model that let it bring award-recognized spirits to market quickly by working with whiskey already aging in warehouses across the bourbon-producing states.

The Whiskey

The flagship releases are Cask House Triple Oak Bourbon and Cask House Triple Oak Rye Whiskey, both blended from whiskeys as old as eight years, distilled in Kentucky, Indiana, Colorado, Illinois, and Tennessee, and married together before finishing in oak and rye whiskey barrels. The "triple oak" name refers to that layered barrel program: base maturation, blending, and a final finishing stage designed to round out the profile.

Beyond the Cask House line, the distillery runs a deeper solera-style program called Mashbuild, blending barrels that range from two to eighteen years old across a spread of flavor profiles, and Evans & Pike Reserve Bourbon, an ultra-aged expression built from three separate mash bills. The Washington Collection is where the finishing work gets most adventurous: bourbon rested in twelve-year-old Barbados molasses rum casks, bourbon finished with 100 percent real Madagascar vanilla in cask, bourbon finished in Madeira barrels, and two American single malt whiskeys, one finished in Oloroso Sherry casks and one finished in Islay single malt whiskey barrels, both aged a minimum of two years post-finish. The house also produces Icelyn Vodka, a gluten-free vodka distilled to more than 190 proof using ingredients sourced from Hawaii, and The Conservator Gin, built from a deliberately small botanical count per run so each ingredient stays distinct rather than blurring into a generic juniper profile.

Why It Matters

Cask House Triple Oak Bourbon and Cask House Triple Oak Rye Whiskey have both medaled three years running in national spirits competitions: gold with a 91-point "Best Buy" rating in 2019, silver at 88 points in 2018, and silver at 89 points again in 2021. Mashbuild has taken a Gold Medal from the Tasting Institute, and Evans & Pike Reserve Bourbon won Gold at the Fifty Best competition. For a young, blending-focused operation founded in 2019, that is a consistent medal record across multiple product lines rather than one lucky release, and it reflects a genuine point of view about barrel finishing as its own craft, distinct from simply bottling sourced whiskey unchanged.

Visiting the Distillery

The tasting room at 622 Jefferson Street in Washington, Missouri is open Wednesday through Saturday from 1pm to 6pm, and tastings are also available at Front Street Cellars in downtown Washington. Visitors can call ahead to schedule an appointment for a guided tasting or to build a custom barrel or bottled creation, an option worth planning for rather than a walk-in experience.

The Sentinel Room's Reserve Whiskey Library carries four expressions from Washington Distilling Company, including Cask House Triple Oak Bourbon and Cask House Triple Oak Rye Whiskey, giving those who appreciate good whiskey a direct comparison point between a single-mash-bill bourbon and the layered, multi-source blending approach this Missouri distillery has built its name on.