Kings County Distillery LLC

Kings County Distillery is New York City's oldest operating distillery — and the Brooklyn-based craft whiskey operation that re-established commercial whiskey production in New York City for the first time since Prohibition. Founded in 2010 by Kentucky native Colin Spoelman and David Haskell in a small Williamsburg space, Kings County moved its operations in 2012 to the historic Paymaster Building inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard — a 169-year-old brick industrial building that had served as the Navy Yard's paymaster headquarters during World War II. The Paymaster Building distillery, with its preserved 19th-century brick construction, polished hardwood floors, and the visible copper pot stills as the architectural centerpiece, is one of the most photographed working distilleries in any American city. The technical operation runs primarily on small-batch pot-still distillation — a deliberate departure from the column-still production that dominates Kentucky bourbon and Tennessee whiskey. Spoelman's original mission was to apply Kentucky bourbon production traditions (he grew up in Harlan County, Kentucky) to a Brooklyn craft scale, using local Hudson Valley grain and small-format aging that would let the brand release substantive aged whiskey on a meaningful timeline. Nicole Austin — now General Manager of Cascade Hollow Distilling (George Dickel) in Tennessee — got her start in the bourbon industry as Kings County's Master Blender, giving the operation an additional credibility…