Desert Door

Desert Door Distillery is the Driftwood, Texas craft operation that's almost single-handedly defined the modern American craft sotol category — and the producer whose Texas-grown wild-harvested sotol production has put a centuries-old Texas-Mexico borderland spirit back on American shelves at meaningful commercial scale. Founded in 2017 by three U.S. Army veterans — Brent Looby, Judson Kauffman, and Ryan Campbell, who met at the McCombs School of Business at UT Austin — Desert Door operates from a working distillery and visitor center in Driftwood (the small Hill Country town roughly 25 miles southwest of Austin in the broader Driftwood-Wimberley-Dripping Springs craft-beverage corridor). The sotol category itself is the brand's editorial centerpiece. Sotol is a spirit distilled from the desert spoon plant (Dasylirion wheeleri and related species), which grows wild across the Chihuahuan Desert of West Texas, New Mexico, and northern Mexico. The plant — sometimes called "sereque" or "sotol" depending on regional vernacular — has been distilled into indigenous spirits for over 800 years in the broader U.S.-Mexico border region, predating tequila and mezcal production in the Mexican agave-growing regions to the south. Desert Door is the first modern Texas-based commercial sotol producer at scale, and the brand's entire product line uses Texas-grown wild-harvested sotol plants rather than agave or grain. The technical production approach involves hand-harvesting wild sotol plan…