![]() When the laws finally changed, we raised money and formed a board. I actually don’t think we could have changed the laws without each other. Our passion was simply infectious, and we were unfiltered in our messaging along our journey. Together, we were a force when it came to reviving this history and getting Chattanooga excited about it. You and your original partner, Joe Ledbetter, had a falling out and he’s no longer with Chattanooga Whiskey. Tourism in Chattanooga was growing, and finally, the idea of starting this business with my buddy in my hometown seemed incredibly exciting and was a ride I wanted to take. The location seemed perfect, nestled in the mountains of Southeast Tennessee: The local entrepreneurial community was firing up, the city had been getting more attention as an outdoor hotspot and mecca for climbing. The discovery of the history of whiskey in Chattanooga was where the idea generated from, but there were a lot more influences. ![]() To learn of this strategy and what the past decade has been like as a craft distiller, we sat down with Piersant. "Every consumer who walks in our doors, says 'you're not bourbon' and that got us to thinking, 'what are we?' and we wanted to celebrate our roots from Tennessee, but we are not a traditional Tennessee whiskey," Piersant says. Instead, he’s calling it, "Tennessee High Malt,” albeit it’s clearly classified and labeled as a bourbon. In August, Chattanooga Whiskey 91 will replace the company’s 1816 Reserve, and Chattanooga Whiskey 111 will replace 1816 Cask. While straight bourbons, these four grain bourbons (distilled at their distillery) include three specialty malts (malted rye, caramel malt barley, honey malt barley) and have pushed Piersant to do something extremely unusual in American whiskey. He is shying away from marketing his product as a bourbon. That was 2011 and a lot has changed in the past eight years, including the complete rebranding of Chattanooga Whiskey’s products. Piersant and his business partner at the time (more on that later) lobbied lawmakers to legalize distilling, while they sourced whiskey from a little known distilling haven in Lawrenceburg, Ind. Prohibition wreaked a havoc on distilling that it may take another 100 years from which to recover. ![]() ![]() For those hopping just now onto the distilling trend, this is very common. There was just one problem: Chattanooga made distilling illegal after Prohibition and hadn't changed the law. ![]()
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