Dan Garrison visited the Kentucky Bourbon Trail in the early 2000s, learned that bourbon can legally be made anywhere in the United States, and decided Texas should make it. He left a career in software marketing, got mentorship from Elmer T. Lee — the legendary Buffalo Trace distiller behind Blanton's — and went to work on the Texas legislature to clear away Prohibition-era laws still on the books. In 2006 he and his wife Nancy received the first stiller's permit for bourbon issued outside Kentucky or Tennessee, making Garrison Brothers the first legal whiskey distillery in Texas and the first place outside Kentucky to make genuine corn-to-cork bourbon. The Hill Country heat nearly ended it: their first batch was destroyed by the temperature swings, and Dan had to find a cooper willing to build custom barrels with staves thick enough to survive a Texas summer. That heat is now the distinguishing feature, driving whiskey into and out of the wood far faster and more aggressively than Kentucky ever could. Everything is milled, cooked, distilled, barreled, and aged on the 68-acre ranch in Hye, using organic Texas corn, wheat, and barley. The first bottle sold in 2010. The range spans expressions from 80 to 140 proof — Small Batch, Balmorhea, Laguna Madre, Lady Bird, Guadalupe, HoneyDew, and the coveted Cowboy Bourbon.

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