Circle City Whiskey Co. Takes Its 50/50 Club to the Midwest — and the Industry Is Paying Attention
There is a particular kind of credibility that only comes from obsession. Not marketing dollars, not distillery tourism, not a famous founder's last name stamped on the label — just the accumulated trust of bourbon nerds who have watched a person show up, again and again, with extraordinary barrels. That is the story of Circle City Whiskey Co., the Indianapolis-based independent bottler that has quietly become one of the most compelling small operations in American whiskey. And now, with the expansion of its innovative 50/50 Club program into Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois, Circle City is signaling that it is done staying quiet.
From Barrel Club to Bonafide Brand
The origin story of Circle City Whiskey Co. is less about grand ambition and more about what happens when genuine enthusiasm meets an underserved market. Based in Indianapolis, Indiana, Circle City evolved from a very popular bourbon club with 65 barrel picks over five years into a preeminent American independent bottler. That is not a trivial detail. Sixty-five barrel picks over five years is a serious body of work — a sustained, hands-on education in what separates a merely good barrel from a transcendent one. Many bourbon clubs dabble. Circle City did the work.
Founder Drew Black is at the heart of the brand's success, bringing a passion for whiskey and a hands-on approach to every release. His story is refreshingly free of the tired old narrative of having a long, storied family legacy in whiskey. Instead, his journey began with a love for whiskey and a desire to bring local enthusiasts together to select single barrels. That community-first ethos still runs through everything Circle City does. The brand did not originate as a business looking for a market — it originated as a community that already had one.
The name "Circle City" comes from the city of Indianapolis, where Black's facility is located, just a short drive from the brand's headquarters in Noblesville, a northeastern suburb of the city. Indianapolis is famously known as the "Circle City," a nickname derived from its unique 1821 city plan, which features a large circular street. The name carries local pride without a hint of affectation — exactly the kind of identity that resonates with a customer base that has grown wary of whiskey brands engineered from the top down by consultants and brand managers.
Deriving from an Indianapolis-based barrel selection group that has immense pride for their Circle City roots, they have humbly served that community by scouring coast-to-coast for the best barrels they could find and bottling them with transparency and integrity. They have certainly benefited from close proximity to Kentucky and excellent Indiana-based distilleries, and have captured the attention of stores and groups throughout the country. Geography, in this case, is a real strategic advantage. Sitting in the heartland between the bourbon belt and the great grain belt of the upper Midwest gives Circle City access to distillery relationships that a coastal bottler would struggle to cultivate.
The 50/50 Club: Blending as Creative Statement
How the Concept Was Born
The 50/50 Club did not arrive as a calculated product extension. It arrived, as the best ideas often do, from necessity filtered through curiosity. Circle City owner Drew Black, looking to grow his company's offerings, liked the idea of blending so much that he looked to his existing stock of sourced American whiskey barrels, aiming to utilize barrels of an outstanding nature that didn't quite fit into his brand's very popular single barrel program. It is from this that the 50/50 Club concept was born.
This is a crucial distinction worth sitting with. The barrels going into 50/50 Club releases are not second-tier stock. They are, by Black's own account, barrels of an outstanding nature — the kind of barrels that simply defied easy categorization in the single barrel format. What the 50/50 Club does is ask a different question: not "what makes this barrel excellent on its own?" but rather "what happens when two excellent barrels that speak different dialects of American whiskey are made to finish each other's sentences?"
The result of a very deliberate blending process, the 50/50 Club whiskeys represent the pinnacle in the idea of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. That is the philosophical backbone of blending as a craft, and it is a philosophy that runs counter to the dominant American whiskey market obsession with single barrels and uncut, unfiltered bottlings. There is a time and place for maximum barrel transparency — but there is also profound artistry in knowing how two distinct barrels can elevate each other into something neither could achieve alone.
The Distillery DNA Behind the First Batch
Circle City has not been shy about the sourcing behind its initial 50/50 Club offering. Batch 1 of The 50/50 Blend represents a unique marriage of two powerhouse distilleries: Wild Turkey and Heaven Hill. While the name suggests an even split, the blend is actually composed of 55% Wild Turkey and 45% Heaven Hill, offering a distinctive flavor profile that pulls from two of the most storied and stylistically different producers in American whiskey history. Wild Turkey brings its famously high rye content, robust structure, and the unmistakable depth that comes from aging in the hot, humid rickhouses of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. Heaven Hill, the largest independent family-owned distillery in the country, contributes a different kind of backbone — rich, grain-forward, with a sweetness that has made its various brands perennial favorites.
Blending Wild Turkey and Heaven Hill stock is not a gimmick. These are two producers with deeply individual house styles, and the tension between them — the spice of one against the sweetness of the other — is exactly the kind of creative friction that produces whiskey worth thinking about. The fact that Circle City landed on a 55/45 split rather than a true half-and-half also says something about their methodology: this is not a formula exercise. It is a taste-first endeavor, with ratios following the palate rather than a spreadsheet.
Black's Vision for the Program
Drew Black has spoken with clarity about what the 50/50 Club is meant to accomplish. "The goal of the 50/50 Club was to create whiskeys that are truly unique to Circle City Whiskey Company," Black said in a news release. The emphasis on uniqueness here carries real weight in the current NDP landscape. When dozens of independent bottlers are drawing from overlapping pools of contract whiskey, the ability to create something genuinely differentiated — something that could only come from your specific relationships, your specific palate, your specific blending philosophy — is a meaningful competitive moat.
"The goal of the 50/50 Club was to create whiskeys that are truly unique to Circle City Whiskey Company," Black stated. "It was also our first foray into blending completely different whiskeys from different distilleries, so I wanted to keep things simple to start. That candor — acknowledging that the 50/50 Club was a first foray into cross-distillery blending — is refreshing. Black is not overselling the concept as some ancient proprietary art form. He is presenting it honestly as an evolving experiment, one that started with discipline and simplicity before the inevitable expansion of scope.
"Whether it be single barrels or unique blends, we produce whiskeys we love to drink because, ultimately, we are bourbon nerds first." That sentiment, unpretentious and direct, is what separates Circle City from the flood of lifestyle-brand whiskey companies that prioritize aesthetics over liquid. The bottles are interesting because the people making the decisions about what goes in them are genuinely obsessed with what is in them.
The Midwest Expansion: Markets, Mechanics, and Opportunity
Where the 50/50 Club Is Going
Following the initial success of a 50/50 Club blend from two well-known American whiskey distilleries, Circle City is bringing this program to key retail markets in Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois for clubs and retailers wanting their own special pick. The structure of the expansion is important to understand. This is not a traditional retail roll-out where cases of product get allocated to distributors and stocked on shelves for any consumer to grab. The program is designed specifically for clubs and retailers who want to make their own selection — meaning each participating retailer or club gets a pick tailored to their customer base.
This model threads a needle between the single barrel pick model that bourbon enthusiasts have embraced enthusiastically for years and a new, more collaborative blending-focused format. Instead of a retailer selecting a single barrel from a distillery's warehouse and slapping a private label on it, the 50/50 Club invites that retailer or club into a more complex conversation: which two whiskeys should be married together, and in what proportion, to produce something their specific customers will find extraordinary?
For Wisconsin and Illinois markets specifically, this is a significant moment. Both states have robust whiskey communities with well-established barrel-pick cultures centered around retailers like Binny's in Illinois and a network of independent shops in Wisconsin that have built loyal followings through exclusive selections. Bringing a blended-pick program into these markets adds a new dimension to what those communities can offer their customers — and what those customers can brag about to their friends.
Why Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois Make Strategic Sense
The geographic logic here is not accidental. Indiana is Circle City's home market, and the brand has already cultivated deep relationships there. Deriving from an Indianapolis-based barrel selection group that has immense pride for their Circle City roots, they have humbly served that community by scouring coast-to-coast for the best barrels they could find and bottling them with transparency and integrity. They have certainly benefited from close proximity to Kentucky and excellent Indiana-based distilleries. A reinforced presence in the home state makes obvious sense before marching further afield.
Wisconsin and Illinois are natural adjacencies — both share cultural affinity with Midwestern whiskey culture, both have whiskey consumers who are sophisticated enough to appreciate a blending concept, and both offer distribution channels that are accessible to a growing independent bottler without the need for an immediate national footprint. Starting regional also allows Circle City to refine the program's operational mechanics — how the selection process works with retail partners, how blends are approved and bottled, how inventory is managed — before the inevitable questions about national expansion begin.
A Company in the Middle of a Breakout Year
The Growth Numbers
This expansion follows a significant growth curve the company has experienced of over 100 percent YTD 2025 vs. 2026. Doubling year-over-year is the kind of growth that gets the attention of distributors, investors, and competitors in equal measure. For a small independent bottler, it also presents a very real operational challenge: how do you maintain the sourcing relationships, the barrel quality, and the deliberate selection process that produced the growth in the first place when demand suddenly doubles? The answer, in Circle City's case, appears to be structured expansion rather than unconstrained volume chasing.
The 50/50 Club model is actually well-suited to managed growth. Because each release is tailored to a specific retail partner or club, Circle City can scale the program incrementally — adding new markets one region at a time, without overwhelming their barrel inventory or diluting the quality of their picks. The constraint is baked into the structure of the program itself.
Award Recognition and Industry Standing
Other key markers of Circle City's success include winning multiple ASCOT Double Platinum and Platinum medals, as well as being named Best in Category: American at ASCOT for its 11+ year rye whiskey. The ASCOT Awards — the American Spirits Competition — are among the more rigorous evaluation bodies in the domestic spirits industry. Multiple Double Platinum medals, combined with a Best in Category designation specifically for their aged rye, gives Circle City a credibility signal that matters to serious whiskey buyers who use competition results as a first-pass filter.
The 11+ year rye whiskey that earned the Best in Category designation is a particularly meaningful achievement. Aged rye is a category where the range of quality is enormous — poorly handled rye barrels at that age can become astringent and over-oaked, while well-chosen, well-finished ones develop a complexity that competes comfortably with the finest aged bourbon. The fact that Circle City's sourcing instincts were sharp enough to identify a rye barrel at that age and bring it to market in a way that impressed competition judges speaks directly to the quality of their palate and their barrel selection methodology.
The Lounge and Gift Shop: Building a Physical Presence
Circle City also recently opened its own lounge and gift shop at its location in Indianapolis, Indiana. This is more than a retail convenience. For an independent bottler, a physical tasting space serves several functions simultaneously. It gives the brand a home base where enthusiasts can experience the full range of offerings in the proper context — away from the noise of a bar or the impersonality of a liquor store shelf. It creates a venue for release events, barrel pick announcements, and the kind of community gathering that drew people to Circle City in the first place, back when it was just a bourbon club doing barrel picks. And it gives prospective retail partners and wholesale accounts a place to visit, taste, and understand what the brand is actually about before they commit shelf space or a 50/50 Club pick.
The lounge operates Thursday through Friday from 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm, and Saturday through Sunday from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, which suggests a deliberate weekend-and-after-work focus designed to serve the enthusiast crowd rather than a tourist-driven daytime model. That operating philosophy tracks perfectly with a brand built by and for bourbon nerds.
The Larger Conversation: Independent Bottlers and the Future of American Whiskey
Why NDPs Matter Right Now
In the world of non-distilling producers (NDPs), standing out can be a challenge. With so many small players in the market, it's easy for even the most well-crafted whiskey to get lost in the shuffle. That observation, while honest, should not obscure the fact that the best American NDPs are doing something genuinely important for the category. They are creating demand for aged and specialty barrels that might otherwise disappear into large blends or commodity allocations. They are building communities of educated drinkers who know how to evaluate quality independently of marketing. And they are developing blending expertise that, in some cases, rivals or surpasses what larger distilleries produce on their assembly-line release schedules.
Led by Drew Black, a highly regarded expert in whiskey barrel sourcing, Circle City seeks to select the best whiskey they can find from distilleries across the United States. Once sourced, the intersection of collective palate, quality finishing, and master blending is put forward to leave the brand's unique stamp on every product they release. That phrase — "collective palate" — deserves attention. Circle City is not a one-man-show where a single guru's taste dictates everything. The use of a collective sensibility in evaluating and approving releases is a more democratic and arguably more reliable approach to quality control. It guards against the blind spots that any individual palate inevitably develops over time.
Blending as the Next Frontier
For decades, the American whiskey market's enthusiasm for single barrels created a kind of cultural bias against blending — a sense that blended whiskey was somehow less pure, less authentic, less worthy of serious attention than its single-barrel counterpart. That bias is eroding rapidly, and Circle City's 50/50 Club sits at the leading edge of that shift. The Scotch whisky world has never suffered from this prejudice; blended Scotch commands enormous respect among connoisseurs who understand that the finest expressions of that tradition involve extraordinary skill in marrying individually unremarkable components into something greater. American whiskey is catching up.
The 50/50 Club is a neat conceptual package for introducing blending to an American audience that may be unfamiliar with the practice at this level. The name itself — 50/50 — communicates equality and balance without any intimidating jargon. And the model of giving retail clubs and stores their own custom blend pick mirrors the familiar, beloved single barrel pick model in a way that makes the leap feel natural rather than foreign.
What Enthusiasts Should Watch For
For whiskey enthusiasts in Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois, the practical implication of the 50/50 Club expansion is straightforward: their favorite local retailer or bourbon club may soon be offering a custom-blended Circle City selection that nobody else in their state can buy. That kind of scarcity and local pride — the same forces that have fueled the single barrel pick culture for years — is a powerful driver of enthusiasm and loyalty. The difference with a blended pick is that the story behind the bottle is richer. It is not just "we went to this distillery and found this barrel." It is "we worked with Circle City to create something that has never existed before and will never exist again."
As the 50/50 Club grows, the diversity of blends on the market will grow with it. Eventually, enthusiasts will have the ability to compare different retailers' 50/50 picks — not just tasting notes but blending decisions, distillery pairings, and ratios. That is the kind of nuanced conversation that the American whiskey community thrives on, and Circle City is building the infrastructure for it in real time.
The Bottom Line
Circle City Whiskey, a relatively small operation based in Noblesville, Indiana, is making waves. Through sheer dedication and a focus on quality, Circle City is slowly but surely gaining a cult following, largely thanks to social media platforms like Instagram. The word "cult" gets overused in whiskey marketing, but in Circle City's case it applies with precision. A cult following is not just a passionate following — it is one that was built from the inside out, through genuine product quality and community engagement, rather than manufactured from the top down through advertising. That kind of following is durable in ways that marketing-driven buzz rarely is.
The expansion of the 50/50 Club into the Midwest is not a pivot or a reinvention. It is an amplification of exactly what has made Circle City worth watching since Drew Black started dragging bourbon club members to warehouses in search of the perfect barrel. The same sourcing obsession, the same collective palate, the same commitment to putting something genuinely unique in the bottle — now applied to a blending model that has the potential to distinguish Circle City from every other independent bottler playing in the same space. For a brand that has already doubled its business in a single year and collected some of the industry's most coveted competitive hardware, the ambition expressed by this expansion feels not just warranted, but earned.
