Big River Distilling Company

B.R. Distilling Company — known publicly as Big River Distilling — is the Memphis craft operation responsible for Blue Note Bourbon, one of the most quietly respected sourced-and-blended bourbon brands of the modern American whiskey era. Founded in 2014 by McCauley Williams (President) and Alexander Folk (Director of Operations), with longtime childhood friend JB Blancett joining as Sales Manager, B.R. Distilling occupies a reclaimed industrial warehouse in North Memphis that was originally part of an auxiliary cluster supporting the area's historic Firestone tire factory — the warehouse the founders converted into a distillery had previously been used to manufacture adhesives before sitting abandoned for decades. The distinguishing characteristic of the operation is the unusually long average age statement on the flagship Blue Note Bourbon. Blue Note is blended in small batches from whiskey that is, on average, at least nine years old — a substantially older average than most craft sourced-bourbon brands, which typically blend from much younger stock to stretch supply and keep prices accessible. The blending approach (Williams and Folk select specific barrels from sourced stock and assemble the small-batch releases by hand) is the operational hinge of the brand, and the consistent older-age commitment has built B.R. Distilling's reputation in Memphis and increasingly across the Southeast as one of the few sourced brands genuinely committed to longer-aged whiskey at accessib…