Bendistillery, INC.

Bendistillery is the Bend, Oregon craft spirits operation that holds an essentially unmatched distinction in modern American craft distilling: founded in 1996, it's the oldest craft microdistillery west of the Mississippi River and one of the very few American craft distilleries that predates the modern craft-spirits movement by over a decade. The operation, which markets its products under the Crater Lake Spirits brand name (referencing the Crater Lake National Park that sits in the southern Cascade Mountains of Oregon, a few hours south of Bend), was founded by Jim Bendis on a 30-acre juniper-tree farm in the high-desert country east of Bend — a deliberate choice tying the brand to the broader Eastern Oregon high-desert agricultural and outdoor-recreation identity. The 1996 founding date is editorially significant. American craft distilling as a meaningful commercial movement essentially didn't exist before the early 2000s — the post-Prohibition spirits industry had consolidated to a handful of major producers and craft-scale distilling was effectively a regulatory and economic non-starter through most of the 20th century. Bendistillery's founding in 1996 predates Tuthilltown (NY, 2003), Stranahan's (CO, 2004), Westward/House Spirits (OR, 2004), and essentially every other modern American craft whiskey operation. The brand effectively established the regulatory and operational template that the broader 2000s-2010s craft distilling movement would follow. The product range …