From a lost software job to a licensed still in Hye.

Garrison Brothers is a bourbon distillery on a ranch in Hye, Texas, in the Texas Hill Country, about an hour’s drive from Austin, Distiller says. English Wikipedia and the company name Dan and Nancy Garrison as its founders; the company calls Nancy Garrison its co-founder and co-chief executive, and says Dan Garrison’s brother Charlie Garrison works for the business as its travelling salesman, its “Whiskey Peddler.” The distillery sits on a ranch of about 68 acres, The Daily Pour reported in November 2024.

The founding date depends on whom you ask. The company’s own timeline gives 2006 as the year the distillery was established, 2007 for its distilling permits and 2008 for the start of legal distilling, and English Wikipedia and The Daily Pour also give 2006. Distiller, the magazine of the American Distilling Institute, gave 2004 in an interview with Dan Garrison published in July 2025.

That interview tells the founder’s story. Dan Garrison was working in software marketing in Austin when his employer, Exterprise, closed in 2001, and he was still out of work two years later when the idea of a Texas bourbon took hold. He learned the trade in Kentucky, where he befriended Dave Pickerell, the former master distiller of Maker’s Mark, who later spent a week in Texas teaching him. Garrison says he wrote to the federal regulator to ask whether a whiskey made in Texas could legally be called bourbon, and was told it could, because bourbon can be made anywhere in the United States.

The first still had a pedigree of its own. Garrison told Distiller that the distillery began with an antique pot still nicknamed The Copper Cowgirl, which he says was built by Vendome Copper & Brass Works for Jimmy Russell at Wild Turkey and later sold to Elmer T. Lee at Buffalo Trace. The company says it sold its first bottle of Garrison Brothers bourbon in 2010; its timeline names Young Gun and Small Batch as the first releases.

A wax-dipped bottle, and an agreement about the wax.

The most recognisable part of a Garrison Brothers bottle is its top. The bottles are wax-dipped, and the company says it handles every step itself, from milling the grain to applying the wax seal. Wax on a bourbon bottle invites one comparison above all, and The Daily Pour reported in November 2024 that the two distilleries settled it early: under a “gentleman’s agreement” reached when Garrison Brothers was founded, the Texas distillery may wax-dip its bottles so long as it does not use red wax or let the wax drip, the two features that define the Maker’s Mark bottle. The same report described a good relationship between Garrison and Maker’s Mark chairman emeritus Bill Samuels Jr.

Around the core Small Batch and Single Barrel bottlings, the company’s timeline adds a release almost every year: Balmorhea and Estacado in 2017, HoneyDew, Hye Rye and Laguna Madre in 2020, Guadalupe in 2021 and Lady Bird in 2023. The company credits Nancy Garrison with creating HoneyDew, which The Daily Pour described as a four-year-old bourbon infused with organic wildflower honey. English Wikipedia notes that the distillery’s charity, Good Bourbon for a Good Cause, raises money for the renovation of Balmorhea State Park in West Texas.

The flagship of the range is Cowboy Bourbon, an annual cask-strength release. The company dates the first Cowboy and the first Single Barrel to 2013, and English Wikipedia, citing the Austin American-Statesman’s Austin360 site, says a new batch has been released each year since 2015. The name was tested in court. A California distributor, Allied Lomar, which held a “Cowboy Little Barrel” mark, sued the distillery; a federal jury found in January 2017 that the earlier mark had been abandoned, The Spirits Business reported, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed the verdict in July 2018, according to English Wikipedia and Garrison’s law firm, Graves Dougherty Hearon & Moody.

The recipe is part of the brand story too. The Daily Pour reported a wheated mash of 74 percent corn, 15 percent wheat and 11 percent malted barley, distilled only once.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all American craft distillers: Koval, FEW, Westward, Stranahan’s, Garrison Brothers, Kings County and Copperworks. They sit at different points in the trade, from founder-run distilleries to names that have passed to larger drinks groups, and they make different styles of whiskey, from bourbon and rye to single malt.

One category in particular has been defined only recently. In December 2024 the US Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) announced a standard of identity for “American single malt whisky,” effective on 19 January 2025, in response to petitions from several distillers and the American Single Malt Whisky Commission. Under the rule, such a whisky must be mashed, distilled and aged in the United States; distilled entirely at one US distillery, to 160 proof or less, from a fermented mash of 100 percent malted barley; stored in oak barrels of no more than 700 litres; and bottled at not less than 80 proof, the TTB says. The word “straight” may be added for whisky aged at least two years, and labels have a five-year transition period. VinePair reported in 2019 that the commission’s founding members, when it formed in 2016, included Copperworks, FEW Spirits and House Spirits Distillery, listed with its Westward single malt.

A craft whiskey’s identity is usually carried by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind it may have changed hands or grown beyond where it started. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its spirits are made and how its bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A family distillery that keeps building on the ranch.

The distillery has grown without leaving Hye. The Daily Pour reported in November 2024 that an expansion completed in April 2024 added mashing capacity, a commercial kitchen and a barrel warehouse called The Show Barn, with a visitor centre, bourbon bar and event space inside it. The company names Donnis Todd as its master distiller. Its timeline lists Sonora as a new bourbon in 2025 and, in 2026, a Ranch Reserve line finished in sherry casks and a first Bottled in Bond bourbon.

The craft industry has noticed. The American Distilling Institute named Garrison Brothers its Distillery of the Year for 2023 and gave Dan and Nancy Garrison its Bubble Cap Award, Distiller reported. Dan Garrison is also a founding member of the American Craft Spirits Association, the Texas Distilled Spirits Association and the Texas Whiskey Association, the magazine says, and in 2017 he co-founded Good Bourbon for a Good Cause, a nonprofit that supports Texas communities and veterans.

The craft also had to be adapted to the climate. Distiller reported in 2025 that Garrison spent years refining his whiskey on the ranch by trial and error, working out ageing times and barrel rotation for the Texas heat, and that the distillery uses custom barrels from several cooperages made with extra-thick white oak staves. Garrison told the magazine that sales in the United States make up nearly all of the business, with Canada among its markets abroad.

For a design guide, Garrison Brothers shows how a single closure can carry a brand: a wax-dipped top that, by agreement, avoids red wax and drips, and a range of releases named for Texas places. Compare Maker’s Mark, whose red dripped wax defines its bottle, and Balcones, the Waco distillery and fellow Texas whiskey maker. For this guide we use barrel char, Hill Country copper and limestone with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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