Stillwater Spirits

Stillwater Spirits is the Petaluma, California craft spirits operation founded in 2004 by Brendan Moylan at the Petaluma Foundry Wharf — and one of the founding-era reference points for Northern California craft distilling, predating most of the broader Sonoma County craft-distillery boom of the 2010s by roughly a decade. The operation runs in parallel with Moylan's Distilling Co., the closely-related sister-brand that Moylan also operates from the same Petaluma Foundry Wharf facility, with both brands sharing production infrastructure and operating identity under the broader Moylan family beverage business that includes Moylan's Brewing in nearby Novato.

The 2004 founding date is editorially significant for the modern Northern California craft distilling scene. Stillwater Spirits opened the same year as Stranahan's (Colorado) and Westward Whiskey (Oregon), making it one of the very first modern American craft distilleries to operate on the West Coast — and the only operation in the entire San Francisco North Bay region producing aged spirits in commercial volume during that founding craft-distilling era. The Petaluma Foundry Wharf location at 611 2nd Street puts the distillery in the heart of one of Petaluma's most actively revitalized historic waterfront commercial districts.

The product range covers Moylan's Brewing-influenced beer-distilled whiskey programs as well as the broader Stillwater range — Moylan's Whiskey (the flagship Petaluma-distilled whiskey, sourced from Moylan's brewery beer base), Stillwater Spirits American Rye Whisky (aged four years in new American white oak), Moylan's Double-Barrel Cask Strength Single-Malt Whisky (one of the brand's most-collected releases, with retailers in Petaluma and Santa Rosa routinely sold out), Stillwater Spirits Vodka, Stillwater Spirits Gin, Stillwater Spirits Pear Brandy (using regional Sonoma County pear harvest), Stillwater Spirits Grappa (distilled from Sonoma County wine industry grape marc), and a rotating range of seasonal and limited single-cask bottlings. The Moylan's/Stillwater integrated beer-and-spirits production approach is operationally similar to other brewery-distillery hybrids (Seven Stills, Ranger Creek) but predates most of those by nearly a decade.

The Petaluma Foundry Wharf visitor experience runs through the working distillery and tasting room facility. The location pairs naturally with a broader Sonoma County craft-beverage day that combines Stillwater with the surrounding Petaluma brewery cluster, the nearby Griffo Distillery and Sonoma Coast Spirits operations in the immediate Petaluma area, and the broader Sonoma County wine-country tourism economy that anchors year-round visitor traffic to the region.