THE STILL HOUSE AT WHISKEY RANCH
FORT WORTH — It’s a Saturday afternoon in early January, and I am sitting in a sunny tasting room at Firestone & Robertson’s Whiskey Ranch, set on 112 acres south of downtown Fort Worth. A back patio offers up a selfie-worthy view of the city’s ever-growing skyline.
When I tell people that my Saturday will consist of visiting a whiskey ranch, their eyes light up like I’m going to Disneyland. The term “ranch” evokes freedom, expanse and a rootsy Lone Star vibe that excites even those who don’t drink whiskey. It’s genius.
“Whiskey Ranch was the perfect name because it tells you where you are and what we do,” Troy Robertson says as we sit in the tasting room squinting at our tumblers. “They don’t have ranches in Kentucky. We have ranches in Texas.”
In 2014, Robertson and business partner Leonard Firestone had the crazy idea to purchase the secondoldest golf course in the city and build a whiskey distillery on site, from the ground up. The pair had launched their own label in 2011, TX Whiskey. They are known for two varieties, a blended whiskey and a straight bourbon. The “TX” on the label makes it easy to pick out from an array of brown bottles at any bar.
The former Glen Garden Country Club used to be
the stomping grounds of legendary golfers like Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, but today, on a hill overlooking a pond, Robertson and his team are putting together a veritable refinery for whiskey.
It is the only golf course that has a distillery on site. Or is it a distillery that has a golf course?
Robertson, a native of Midland, is a former oil and gas guy who developed an interest in brewing beer in college, progressing to whiskey and wine as he got older. Like many creatives before him, he began wanting to know why he liked what he liked. Eventually, he wanted to make whiskey his occupation.
“We spend an inordinate amount of time trying to educate our consumers,” he says as Texas country music oozes from speakers around the room. “We’ve built the facility so people can get up close and personal with the process.”
In fact, he’s dubbed Whiskey Ranch a sort of campus for whiskey making.
“Even though the tours are only an hour and a half or so, we spend a lot of time getting into how the whiskey is made. More goes into whiskey than goes into making wine,” he says.
F&R came onto the scene at a time when craft-anything came into fashion. At the heart of the movement is the concept of knowing who made the product you love so much and understanding the work that went into it. Consumers were ready and had enough disposable income to cultivate sophisticated palates.
A trademark of TX Whiskey are bottle tops made with scrap leather from nearby boot maker M.L. Leddy’s, which has been crafting boots for generations of Texans.
At the ranch, it’s easy to get giddy simply looking inside an inner-sanctum dining room with a hidden, speakeasy-style entrance. Two walls are lined with rare whiskies and bourbons in exotic bottles.
Robertson shows me around the grounds, unleashing a wealth of whiskey knowledge — some of it flies right over my head. The level of intricacy afoot here just a few weeks away from the first barrel rolling off the line is staggering. F&R has, in essence, built a refinery here in miniature, the kind one sees driving down Texas 225 near La Porte.
He spends 15 minutes explaining to me how he and Firestone found just the correct yeast strain to make the kind of whiskey they had in mind. Like the game that was previously played on the grounds, and will be played again once spring arrives, whiskey is all about patience.
“We weren’t looking for a golf course. We needed the land and wanted to be close to town. It also has all the resources we needed, like four water wells from deep-water limestone aquifers,” Robertson says. That special water will be used to make the next generation of whiskey, too.
“We can do whatever we want to here, while also preserving the legacy of what happened on these courses,” he adds.
Opposite all the machinery is the first of five F&R barrel barns planned on site. Their whiskey sleeps for five years before it is bottled. They will need the room because the new facility will increase the brand’s output from three barrels a day to up to 40.
Its current distillery, on Vickery Boulevard in central Fort Worth, is still operational and will remain open for tours, even after Whiskey Ranch finally opens for regular tours.
Eventually, visitors won’t just be able to tour Whiskey Ranch, Robertson says, they will be able to stay there, too. Part of the long-term plan for Whiskey Ranch includes the development of cottages on site.
“Don’t worry, Uber does come out here,” Robertson says as we polish off one more glass of bourbon.
Thank the whiskey gods for that.