Quality and traceability of ingredients and social/environmental ethics are what make our spirits and aromatic bitters distinct in their industry, and memorably delicious.

Our rye/bitters brand WORKHORSE RYE and our genre-less colorful spirits brand MODERN ANCIENT are founded by an artistic hospitality worker unlike the vast majority of distilleries in the US which are owned and guided by people who focus solely on short term finances.

In 2011 bartender turned distiller Rob East attended the Craft Distilling Course at Siebel Institute of Technology (Chicago) which offered connections and education, enough to start dirtying the hands. Dave Pickerell and Kings County Distillery became very important allies and teachers because of a shared curiosity and quest for quality and variety. Later that year, establishing Workhorse Rye he and friends made the first full-scale distillation of what would become arguably the most unique and quality spread of whiskeys distilled during the craft distilling renaissance.

The recipe was and still is mostly heirloom rye with a bit of malted barley and wheat.

After three years of aging a few experiments, we released that one barrel on Halloween in 2014 at RYE in San Francisco. We’ve since been sourcing and distilling more and more interesting and colorful grains that have previously never been tasted as distilled spirits.

This had lead to direct relationships with many top tier restaurants around the country. Year after year the brand and Rob make slow and through progress in understanding the full spectrum of what it means to redesign an industrial product back into a true agricultural one with finesse and ethos. In 2020 Rob completed the University of Arizona Master Gardener program and started small scale, companion plant farming rare colorful corns as to give those seeds to his farmers to multiple the numbers and eventually distill.

We use mostly used casks which allow The Ingredient to sing first and foremost, and it mitigates our contribution to deforestation and monoculture in the food and bev scene. The casks we use today we will use indefinitely unlike almost any other distiller in the US. We avoid new oak because it is used to add a sugar/woody mask (caramelized oak = sugar) and as a cheap way of cleaning up spirit distilled quickly from modern, nutrient-less/flavorless grains.

No chemical sprays are used, no tilling is done, and the farmer employs many companion crops. We vet each farm to see how they treat their people, creatures, and soil; an egalitarian ethic, humble perspective, and positive impact is very important to us. This community focused method is in fact a retort to the modern industrial way.

DRINK LESS, DRINK BETTER