Tennessee Stillhouse

Tennessee Stillhouse is the working downtown Chattanooga distillery operated by Chattanooga Whiskey Co — the brand that, in March 2015, became the first legal whiskey distillery to operate inside Chattanooga city limits in roughly 100 years. Founded in 2011 by Chattanooga-native Tim Piersant and co-founder Joe Ledbetter, the company spent its first four years operating as a sourced-whiskey brand while Piersant and his team waged a successful campaign to overturn the local-option whiskey production prohibition that had remained in force in Hamilton County since Tennessee's state prohibition era. The state law was changed in 2013, the Tennessee Stillhouse opened in 2015 at 1439 Market Street directly across from the Chattanooga Choo Choo, and the city's distilling industry came back online.

The flagship product line is anchored by the "1816" Reserve Tennessee High Malt — named for the year Chief John Ross founded the trading post at Ross's Landing that would eventually become Chattanooga. The "high malt" technical designation is one of the most distinctive aspects of the Chattanooga Whiskey approach: the standard mash bill uses an unusually high percentage of malted barley (alongside corn and rye) compared to the standard Tennessee whiskey norm, producing a more brewing-influenced flavor profile that brings out the malt character in ways most Tennessee whiskey deliberately suppresses. The company has built additional product lines around this technique: the Cask 111 series (cask-strength single barrels), the Bottled in Bond program, and an extensive experimental "Founder's Series" that explores non-standard mash bills, finishes, and aging variables.

The Tennessee Stillhouse facility itself is the brand's research-and-development distillery — a 3,000-square-foot space with original exposed brick walls and decor made from aged whiskey barrel staves. The larger production volume runs out of the Riverfront Parkway facility (a 50,000-square-foot distillery and rickhouse complex Chattanooga Whiskey opened in 2017), but the Tennessee Stillhouse remains the public-facing visitor experience and the experimental-batch facility where new mash bills and finishes get developed before scaling up to the larger production site.

The Market Street visitor experience is one of the most accessible craft distillery stops in downtown Chattanooga — walking distance from the Chattanooga Choo Choo Historic District, the Tennessee Aquarium, and the broader Southside neighborhood restaurant and bar scene. The tour moves through the working stills, the experimental tasting room, and a small retail program; the larger Riverfront Parkway production facility offers separate tours by appointment for visitors who want to see the full-scale operation alongside the downtown research-and-development site.