Wood Hat Spirits

In a country with more than two thousand craft distilleries, Wood Hat Spirits has a claim nobody else makes: it runs what it describes as the only wood-fired still in the United States, burning scrap wood chips from a local stave mill to heat its distillation. That detail is not a gimmick. It is the logical endpoint of a philosophy that treats whiskey as a farm product, built in a corner of Missouri that supplies white oak barrels to the whiskey world.

History & Heritage

Wood Hat Spirits sits at 489 Booneslick Road in New Florence, Missouri, in the rolling farmland of Montgomery County along Interstate 70 between Columbia and St. Louis. Founder Gary Hinegardner is a trained agronomist who worked on corn cultivation across three continents, including service with the Peace Corps, then spent a long career with Independent Stave Company, one of the country's major barrel-stave producers. The idea for the distillery came from a simple observation: Missouri grows the white oak that ages the world's whiskey, and Missouri grows plenty of corn. He had every ingredient within reach. The first corn seed went in the ground in 2012, and the first batch came off the wood-fired still in 2013. The name comes from Hinegardner's other craft: he turns wooden hats on a lathe, a skill he learned from Johannes Michelsen, the Vermont woodturner who originated the form. Hats from both men hang in the tasting room.

The Whiskey

Hinegardner's core argument is that bourbon makers talk endlessly about barrels and yeast while paying little attention to the grain that makes up most of the mash bill. Wood Hat has planted, distilled, and studied more than one hundred corn varieties and settled on heirloom, food-grade types rather than commodity No. 2 yellow dent: Hopi blue corn, Bloody Butcher, and orange flint among them, grown on the distillery's own ground since 2012. The wood-fired boiler burns scrap wood from a local stave mill and circulates hot oil to the cooker and still. Aging happens in fifteen and fifty-three gallon barrels, many coopered from air-dried staves, inside modified shipping containers where Missouri's hot summers and cold winters work on the whiskey. The results in The Sentinel Room's Reserve Whiskey Library show the range: Wood Hat Aged Blue Corn Whiskey puts the Hopi blue corn front and center, Wood Hat All American Red White & Blue Corn Whiskey blends heirloom varieties, and Wood Hat - Bourbon Rubenesque - Single Barrel Bottled In Bond carries the federal Bottled In Bond designation. The awards shelf backs it up: the Queen's Reserve bourbon took Gold and Wood Hat Bourbon Rubenesque took Silver at the American Distilling Institute judging in 2024, Wood Hat Montgomery County Missouri Straight Bourbon earned a Double Gold at the Key West competition in 2023, and Missouri Corn reports the distillery claimed the Farmer-Distiller Best Bourbon award and Best in State for Missouri at the 2025 Heartland Whiskey Competition.

Why It Matters

Wood Hat is a working example of what Missouri Bourbon is supposed to mean: Missouri corn, Missouri white oak, and distillation that answers to flavor rather than volume. For those who appreciate good whiskey, tasting a blue corn whiskey next to a conventional bourbon is one of the clearest lessons available in what grain actually contributes to the glass. That is why The Sentinel Room keeps 10 Wood Hat expressions in the Reserve Whiskey Library, from Wood Hat - Bloody Dapper Bourbon and Wood Hat Twin Timbers Bourbon to the Wood Hat - Black Walnut Liqueur, a deliberately deep bench for a small Missouri producer.

Visiting the Distillery

The tasting room in New Florence is open Monday and Thursday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and closed Tuesday, Wednesday, and Sunday. Tours are available by appointment at (573) 835-1000. The distillery is also a Harvest Hosts location, offering overnight parking to self-contained RV travelers making the drive along Interstate 70.