Ironroot Republic Distillery in Denison, Texas celebrated ten years of distilling on Saturday, November 16, 2024. The day began with a ribbon cutting for a brand new building, which will house blending and bottling. Local officials were also on hand to issue a proclamation regarding the milestone anniversary. At noon special bottlings of Team Danger and Ichor were released, and in the afternoon there were classes including Cigars 101 and a whiskey and cigar pairing followed by a guided tasting of Ironroot Republic whiskeys. There were raffles and food trucks and music throughout the day.
Ironroot Republic was founded by the Likarish family after Robert Likarish came home from law school with one semester to go and announced as his family sat at the holiday table that he really didn’t think he was going to be practicing law after all. Robert and his brother Jonathan had joked that they would start a brewery after they retired, but it looked like a distillery was on the horizon much sooner than the family had anticipated. After he graduated, his mother, Marcia Likarish got to work researching all the things he needed to do to prepare to build a distillery, including a trip to Kentucky. Robert and Jonathan attended a distillers’ course at Dry Fly, learned distilling with Hubert Germain-Robin in California, and visited numerous Cognac distilleries in France before returning home and getting to work.
After scouring Texas for a location and being told over and over again that various towns did not want a distillery in their backyard, the town of Denison welcomed them with open arms, even going so far as to help them find the perfect location to house a distillery — a former boat dealership with plenty of space. That building has served the family well over the last decade, only needing a minor addition to house retail and a tasting bar that was separated from the distillery space. Barrel storage has been in the back warehouse room, which has only just filled up completely in the last couple of years. Storage space is at a premium now, which prompted the groundbreaking for a new building in May of 2024.
That new building, completed just this week, will house the bottling line, which is currently inside the distillery. New bottles will be kept there, as well as some new barrels for now, and packaged goods awaiting shipment. There’s an upstairs office and conference room area with three sensory deprivation rooms that will be for blending, a task that is currently without a home in the distillery. Jonathan Likarish described during the tour that he would be working on sensory and blending in the distillery’s conference room and be kicked out for a conference call, moving to the retail area until someone came in for a tour, and then he’d have to find yet another space to work on his evaluations and blending. This new dedicated space will help him to better concentrate on the task at hand.
This week ground will be broken for a new rickhouse on the property. The current rickhouse is completely full, only leaving room for new barrels when older barrels are removed for bottling. The new rickhouse will increase barrel storage capacity significantly.
Once the bottling line is relocated to the new building, a new Vendome copper still will be installed in the still room, increasing distillation capacity significantly. The tentative date for that is summer of 2025.
Over the last decade, Ironroot Republic has won numerous World Whiskies Awards for Bourbon and for corn whiskey. The Likarish family started their whiskey journey over a decade ago learning about distilling and maturation from Hubert Germain-Robin as well as others in the industry. They looked at the terroir of Texas and came up empty-handed until Jonathan Likarish realized that corn is what was grown all over Texas, which led him to discover the art of using heirloom and pedigreed corn varietals as a flavoring grain on top of the majority of yellow dent corn. This philosophy coupled with intensive maturation techniques known as elevage borrowed from the French Brandy world helped the brothers to create their own unique style of Texas whiskey.
Tours are available at Ironroot Republic Distilling in Denison (not Denton, which is about an hour away) at noon and 2pm on Saturdays, and reservations are strongly encouraged. Learn more about Ironroot Republic here and be sure to watch our Ironroot Republic documentary on Whisky Magazine’s YouTube channel.
