Firestone & Robertson Distilling Company

What exactly is bourbon? Being a beer guy, I don’t know much about liquors. But on a Tuesday night, I was going to get a lesson in bourbon at a local distillery in downtown Fort Worth! Joining Chris, Ray and some other friends for a tour of Firestone & Robertson Distilling Company, I was ready to learn and in this amazing environment, I picked up a basic education in bourbon.

Column Distiller

Firestone & Robertson Distilling Company is housed in a renovated 1920s prohibition-era warehouse just south of downtown. This convenient location comes complete with plenty of street parking, making for easy logistics. The tour begins in the warehouse area, which is full of bourbon barrels, stacked neatly along the walls. The atmosphere is stellar!

It amazes me how distilleries operate. For at least 2 years, they don’t sell their product. After 2 years of aging, the product can be sold as bourbon. However, to be considered straight bourbon, the liquid must age at least 4 years. Firestone & Robertson (F&R) wants to bottle straight bourbon, so they must wait. FOUR long years.

The distillery opened its doors in 2012, and has since barreled their Texan take on bourbon. Outside of the staff, no one has tasted their aged bourbon since.

Before you can begin aging, you must first make the bourbon base. So, what makes bourbon, bourbon?

Fermentation Tanks

All bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon. To be classified as bourbon, the following criteria must be met:

1. A minimum of 51 percent corn must be used. F&R uses Texas corn. Why not?
2. Bourbon must contain wheat. Again, wheat from Texas.
3. Bourbon must contain malted barley. Not much malted barley is grown in Texas, so they source out of state barley.
4. Natural yeast turns the sugars from the above ingredients into alcohol. F&R captured and propagated their own yeast strain from a pecan nut.
5. The bourbon must be aged in NEW, charred white oak barrels. Bourbon is clear coming out of the copper column stills; all the color is achieved from the barrels during the aging process.

During the tour, our guide explained all of this and more while showing us the entire process, from fermentation tanks to the two copper column stills made in Kentucky, and finally the barrel-aging process.

TX Blended Whiskey Tasting

While the bourbon is aging, Firestone & Robertson is still busy. As a non-distiller producer, they buy whiskey from other distillers who do not bottle their product. F&R buys available whiskeys that meet their strict criteria, which can be a challenge. For example, every whiskey is at least 6 years old. The different whiskeys are mixed until they achieve the desired taste, passing through only copper lines as 11 employees run the bottling line. The blended result is Firestone & Robertson’s first product, TX Whiskey.

Sealing the TX Whiskey bottles has become their signature, as each bottle is unique. Cork from Portugal is topped with a piece of reclaimed leather, all hand-made in house!

The tour concludes at the bar with a sample of TX Whiskey.

You can find TX Whiskey in stores now, in case you can’t wait for the release of their straight bourbon.

Tours are offered most Saturdays at 2:00 PM for $15 plus tax. Plan to visit about a month out and book a spot on-line, as tours often sell out. The limited tour sizes (40 people maximum) helps keep the tours fun and interactive.