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 (ca…