As a bourbon enthusiast, I scour the results from the annual San Francisco World Spirits Competition like fantasy football fanatics devour pre-season rankings. Not so much to validate what I already know—the major players are always well represented—but to discover standout up-and-coming distillers and under-the-radar bottles to seek out.
Founded in 2000 and among the world’s largest spirits competitions, the SFWSC is considered the gold standard for the depth of its field (nearly 6,000 entries this year across all categories) and its rigorous double-blind tasting process. Reputation means nothing, which is why you’ll find scrappy start-ups rubbing shoulders with the big guys among the bottles selected as category finalists. The winners in each category and the overall best-in-class winners then get announced at an awards gala, this year held in October.
As the pitched competition nears its championship, the finalists across the various whiskey categories brought a number of names that might surprise you. Here are five small Southern producers I’m holding a spot for in my liquor cabinet.
Dark Arts Whiskey House, Lexington, Kentucky
Armagnac Cask Finished Bourbon, French Oak Stave Finished Bourbon, Amburana Oak Stave Finished Rye
Near the end of his pre-law studies at the University of Kentucky, Macaulay Minton switched tracks and enrolled in the brewing, distillation, and winemaking program at what’s now known as UK’s James B. Beam Institute for Kentucky Spirits. He met Wilderness Trail co-founder Patrick Heist during a field trip to the Danville-based distillery, which led to a job, first in the gift shop and then working his way through the ins and outs of fermentation, distillation, and maturation to eventually start and run the distillery’s single-barrel program.
Minton put those skills to good use to open Darks Arts Whiskey House with a business partner in 2023. With no plans to install a distillery, he instead explores the alchemy of blending and finishing whiskeys, often with exotic woods. In its first time entering the competition, Dark Arts scored two finalist nods in the Best Special Barrel Finished Bourbon category for its straight bourbon finished in Armagnac casks and its bourbon finished with toasted French oak staves. And if rye is your whiskey of choice, Dark Arts also received a finalist nod for its rye finished with toasted Brazilian Amburana oak staves.
Mystic Farm & Distillery, Durham, North Carolina
Broken Oak Bourbon
All the grains Mystic Farm & Distillery uses in its bourbons are grown about twenty-five miles from the distillery just outside metro Durham. Friends Jonathan Blitz and Mike Sinclair founded Mystic Farm in 2013, and while their grain-to-glass approach requires years of deliberate planning, the distillery’s most popular product, Broken Oak, a finalist in Best Small Batch Bourbon, six to ten years, is the result of a costly mistake.
Several years ago, Mystic Farm distillers filled a batch of barrels bought from a new cooperage. Due to an equipment issue at the plant, all the barrels leaked. They re-barreled the remaining bourbon in new barrels, which also leaked—but the result tasted fantastic. That “happy accident,” Sinclair says, led to them drilling small holes into subsequent barrelheads, which introduces more oxygen, and then re-barreling after six months. “We continue to lose a large amount of volume, but the remaining liquid is worth it.” The San Francisco judges agreed, noting the bourbon’s “well-rounded flavors of butterscotch, dark chocolate, and a touch of spice.”
Preservation Distillery + Farm, Bardstown, Kentucky
Very Olde St. Nick Single-Barrel Bourbon, Pure Antique 20-Year Bourbon
Starting in the mid-1980s, Preservation Distillery founder Marci Palatella began sourcing and blending vintage stocks of bourbon primarily for Japanese and European markets, well before the current craze for extra-aged whiskeys. It took some years to catch on, but her Very Olde St. Nick and Pure Antique brands, both still selected and blended by Palatella in one- to three-barrel batches, are highly regarded. This year, Preservation Distillery—which she founded in 2017 and now houses barrel aging, blending, and distilling operations—earned two finalist nods for its Very Olde St. Nick “Straight Outta Bardstown” (Best Single Barrel Bourbon, up to 10 years) and Pure Antique 20-year Straight Bourbon (Best Small Batch Bourbon, 11 years and older). For the latter, Palatella blended bourbon from barrels of ten-year-old whiskey sourced from Tennessee and then aged it an additional decade. “It’s phenomenal,” she says. “Like one of those buttery Danish pastries with honey-toasted almonds and cream cheese frosting.” And there’s more good bourbon to come. Palatella has also been patiently stockpiling barrels of whiskey distilled on Preservation Distillery’s two small pot stills. The first release to carry the Preservation label, a seven-year-old bourbon, is set to hit shelves this fall at the distillery. “Nobody waits like I do,” she says.
K.LUKE Whiskey Company, Ocean Springs, Mississippi
Toasted Barrel Bourbon
Jonathan Maisano made his first trip to Kentucky to select a single barrel of bourbon in the summer of 2014. Since then, he’s tasted more than 1,600 barrels, picking about four hundred to bottle and sell at his retail store in Southern Mississippi. Maisano sold the liquor store in January to more fully focus on the whiskey blending company he and his wife, Jennifer, established in 2021, naming it K.LUKE after their children, Kaitlyn and Lucas.
A first-level certified sommelier, Jonathan employs his sensory training to blend barrels of whiskey from various distilleries in Kentucky and Indiana into small-batch, cask-strength releases, some of which he finishes in secondary barrels, including a bourbon he further aged in a barrel that’s been lightly toasted but not charred, a finalist alongside Dark Arts in the Best Special Barrel Finished Bourbon category. Jonathan blends every batch to taste and relies on his sensory skills to gauge when each is ready. “There are many similar traits in both wine and whiskey when searching for nuances,” he says.
Old Hansford, Fort Worth, Texas
Cask Strength Bourbon
Not many whiskey producers list the owner’s cell phone number on their websites. “We’re a small operation,” Howie Mosier says, answering his phone on the third ring. “When you call us you either get me or my wife.” Mosier, who works in the aerospace industry, and his spouse, Cindy, also an engineer, founded Old Hansford in 2019, sourcing whiskey primarily from Texas and Indiana to put together cask-strength blends that suit their palates and reflect their Texas ties. Howie then tweaks the final blends based on blind tastings with friends and family, and contracts with a network of barrel brokers, bottlers, and distributors to get their whiskey onto shelves. “In my regular job, I deal with a lot of suppliers, manufacturers, program managers, and everybody else across the industry,” he says. “So I have the skill set of bringing different entities together to get things done.”
Their efforts have garnered multiple award recognitions, including as a finalist this year in Best Small Batch Bourbon, up to 5 years, for Old Hansford’s flagship cask-strength offering. “Personally, I’m just thrilled to even have my name up next to many of these brands that are out there,” Howie says. “I never thought that would happen.”
