Hillrock Farm

Hillrock Estate Distillery is the Ancram, New York operation that holds an unusual distinction in modern American craft whiskey: one of the first "estate" distilleries in the United States — meaning every step of the production happens on a single working farm, from grain cultivation through malting through distillation through aging. Founded in 2011 by Jeffrey Baker on the family's restored 1806 Federal-style farmhouse and surrounding 75-acre estate in Columbia County, New York (the farm sits in the Hudson Valley roughly two hours north of Manhattan), Hillrock represents one of the more deliberate efforts to recreate the pre-Prohibition American farm-distillery production model that dominated rural East Coast whiskey production through the 1800s. The technical operation is built around an on-site malting floor — a traditional floor-malting setup that's nearly extinct in modern American whiskey production, where almost all distilleries source pre-malted barley from commercial maltsters. Hillrock malts its own barley on-site in the historic traditional method, then distills using a custom-built copper pot still installation. The late Dave Pickerell — the former Master Distiller of Maker's Mark who became one of the most influential consulting figures in modern American craft whiskey before his death in 2018 — served as Hillrock's founding master distiller and developed the foundational mash bills and production protocols that the operation still uses today. The product range…