
First, the industrial era of the 19th century, then prohibition in the 20th century and finally the development of “Modern” market forces have dissolved the ties to “tradition” of distilling in America. Daric, our master distiller, did not grow up distilling with his grandfather, nor did he start pushing a broom in the distillery as a teenager. He was an enthusiastic home brewer/cider maker who was drawn to the pre-industrial age of distilling, when distillers were farmers who wanted to add value to their farm produce. This means Daric is not shackled to what factory distillers could reasonably produce in their massive ethanol plants. Daric follows his own path to create remarkable whiskies that are unlike anything else in the marketplace.

Daric is the first generation of his family to not grow up on a farm and is acutely aware of the decline of the American farm. Van Brunt has worked hard to cultivate our relationship to the land our grain is grown on. A farmer is really more of a steward of the soil than he is a farmer in the way that we have come to think of a farmer since the 20th Century. We don't believe in the use chemical fertilizers or herbicides or pesticides. We don't believe in the patented seed strains of Dow and Monsanto. We DO believe in rotating his crops and the use of organic fertilizers to control pests and protect and care for the soil. It's an important part of Van Brunt's story, because we don't use commodity corn in our whiskey. Commodity corn is the main ingredient in “big” whiskey, and it is commodity corn that is destroying our farms and our farming families across the country. (For more on this a book from a few years ago called “The Omnivore's Dilemma” explores this issue very well)
