Two careers left behind for a still on Chicago’s North Side.

Koval is a craft distillery in the Ravenswood neighbourhood on the North Side of Chicago. English Wikipedia, citing The New York Times in 2009, dates it to 2008 and names its founders as the married couple Robert Birnecker and Sonat Birnecker Hart. Before they made spirits, both worked in Washington, D.C.: the Orthodox Union’s kosher agency described them in August 2009 as “a Professor of Jewish Studies and a Foreign Deputy Press Secretary,” and Gear Patrol reported in 2015 that Robert had been deputy press secretary for the Austrian Embassy and Sonat a tenured professor.

Distilling ran in the family. The OU report says the couple left Washington for Chicago to start the distillery, and that Robert’s grandfather had made spirits in Europe for more than forty years; Gear Patrol wrote that as a teenager Robert helped at his grandparents’ distillery in Austria. In a 2016 company release, Robert Birnecker, by then Koval’s master distiller and chief executive, linked the house style to his Austrian heritage, while Sonat Birnecker Hart was described as co-founder and president.

The name carries both sides of the family. English Wikipedia, citing The New York Jewish Week in 2019, says koval is Yiddish for “blacksmith.” The OU account adds that the word can also describe someone who forges their own path, that the company was named for Sonat’s great-grandfather, who emigrated from Vienna to Chicago at seventeen, and that Robert’s family surname, Schmid, carries the same meaning in German.

Organic grain, kosher certification and labels that are cut, not just printed.

The recipe for the brand is set out in its ingredients. English Wikipedia, citing The New York Jewish Week, says Koval’s spirits are certified kosher and organic, and the OU reported in 2009 that the distillery works from organic raw materials and mashes its own grain and fruit in house. Gear Patrol wrote in 2015 that Koval keeps only the “heart” of each distillation, the part between the heads and the tails, and that the grain list is unusual for American whiskey: a bourbon in which millet makes up the share that is not corn, a rye made from organic Midwestern rye, a whiskey made from millet alone and a Four Grain of oat, malted barley, rye and wheat.

The distillery has also worked with Chicago brewers. The Chicago Tribune reported in September 2009 on Bierbrand, a spirit distilled from lager made with Metropolitan Brewing, and English Wikipedia, citing the Chicago Sun-Times in 2018, says a later version was made with Goose Island.

The visual identity is a family affair too. A Koval release of 31 October 2016, distributed by PR Newswire, named Oona Hart, principal art director of the Chicago brand identity firm Dando Projects and Sonat’s sister, as the designer behind the label of the Barreled Peach Brandy. The same release said that label was printed with the techniques used for the KOVAL Dry Gin label: gold foil, embossing, laser cutting and die cutting. The peach brandy opened a limited line called Susan for President, which the company said was a tribute to Sonat’s aunt Susan, an artist and sculptor who handed out calling cards for a mock campaign to be “President of the World”; the label design, the release said, is an extension of her card. Man of Many reported in September 2018 that Dando Projects also designed the embossed and foiled label of Koval’s Cranberry Gin Liqueur. The company’s own releases write the name in capitals, KOVAL.

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 founders’ distillery that grew into a range.

The business has been recognised beyond the spirits trade. The U.S. Small Business Administration named the founders its Illinois Small Business Persons of the Year in a release of March 2017, and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity named Koval an Illinois Exporter of the Year for 2016, according to English Wikipedia’s citations of both bodies. English Wikipedia lists Robert and Sonat Birnecker as the owners.

The range has widened from the early vodkas, whiskeys and liqueurs. The company’s own site, read in October 2026, groups its products into whiskeys, gins, liqueurs and canned cocktails, with a Dry Gin, a Barreled Gin and a Cranberry Gin Liqueur on the gin shelf and coffee, ginger and rose hip among the liqueurs. The distillery still lists its tasting room and tours at its Ravenswood address on the same site, and the brand’s web address is koval-distillery.com.

For a design guide, Koval shows how a small urban distillery can let its packaging carry the same care as its process, with labels that are foiled, embossed and cut, a designer from the founders’ own family, and a short name with a family story behind it. Compare FEW Spirits, the grain-to-glass distillery in neighbouring Evanston, and Balcones, the Waco distillery known for blue-corn whisky. For this guide we use foil bronze, forge brown and label black with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Koval’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.