Garrison Brothers Is Growing Fast — and It's Not an Accident
Something significant is happening in the Texas Hill Country, and its effects are being felt in liquor stores, hotel bars, and sports venues from coast to coast. Garrison Brothers Distillery, the first legal whiskey distillery in Texas, is reporting double-digit national sales growth and more than 40% gains in its home state. For a family-owned operation tucked into the rolling cedar-covered ranchland outside the tiny community of Hye, Texas, those are numbers that would make any Kentucky bourbon baron raise an eyebrow.
The announcement, timed to land ahead of National Bourbon Day on June 14, arrives at a moment when the broader premium spirits category is humming with momentum but also facing headwinds — tariff uncertainty, shifting consumer spending, and a crowded shelf that demands brands fight for every inch of real estate. Against that backdrop, double-digit growth doesn't just happen. It gets built, deal by deal, barrel by barrel, and relationship by relationship.
The Southern Glazer's Partnership: A Distribution Game-Changer
The Hye, Texas-based producer credited the momentum to its national distribution partnership with Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits, launched roughly nine months ago, alongside the work of its internal sales and marketing teams. That timeline matters. Nine months is a short runway to post double-digit growth nationally, which speaks volumes about the scale and reach that Southern Glazer's — the largest wine and spirits distributor in North America — brings to any brand it takes on.
Before a bottle ever reaches a shelf, someone has to call on the account, build the relationship, negotiate the placement, and train the staff. Distribution is the unsexy infrastructure that separates a cult regional brand from a true national player, and Garrison Brothers has clearly made the leap. "Our performance in Q1 and Q2 reflects the team's strategic planning and focus, the strength of our partnership with Southern Glazer's, and the continued drive of the Garrison Brothers brand in a highly competitive premium bourbon category," said Drew Pennington, vice president of sales at Garrison Brothers. "We are encouraged by our double-digit growth nationally and outsized gains in Texas, which underscore both the resilience of our business and the effectiveness of our route-to-market strategy across all 50 states," Pennington added.
Those words — "route-to-market strategy across all 50 states" — carry real weight. Garrison Brothers is no longer marketing itself as a Texas brand that happens to ship outside the state. It is playing a full national game, with the infrastructure to match. The Texas-at-home gains of more than 40% suggest the brand is also deepening its roots even as it stretches its branches outward — a combination that signals genuine health rather than growth at the expense of the home market.
From a Software Salesman's Dream to a Texas Institution
To understand where Garrison Brothers is going, it helps to appreciate how far it has already traveled. Dan Garrison's journey into the world of bourbon began long before he founded the distillery. After a successful career in software sales, Dan decided to pursue his passion for bourbon full-time. His vision was clear: to create a bourbon that reflected the unique terroir of Texas and the craftsmanship of traditional bourbon-making techniques.
Founded in 2006 by Dan and Nancy Garrison, the distillery remains family-owned and operated. Garrison Brothers bourbon first entered the market in 2010 and is now available nationwide and in five countries. What entered the market in 2010 was more than just another small-batch whiskey — it was a declaration that bourbon was not the exclusive property of Kentucky. In 2006, the distillery was granted the first stiller's permit for bourbon outside of Kentucky and Tennessee, which makes it the oldest legal bourbon distillery in Texas. That permit opened a door that has since let an entire Texas craft spirits industry walk through it.
The early years were not easy. The challenges were numerous, ranging from the harsh Texas climate to the regulatory hurdles that needed to be overcome. However, Dan Garrison's determination and passion for bourbon drove him forward. The early years were characterized by long hours and hard work, as Garrison and his small team worked tirelessly to establish the distillery and produce their first batches of bourbon. That grind paid off in ways that go well beyond the sales charts. The Texas bourbon has earned more than 800 awards and the distillery is visited by over 50,000 people a year.
The Texas Climate as a Winemaking Terroir — But for Bourbon
Any serious conversation about Garrison Brothers has to reckon with geography and climate. The Texas Hill Country is not Kentucky's lush, temperate Bluegrass region, and that difference is the entire point. Every expression of Garrison Brothers bourbon is made from a sweet mash bill and barrel-aged in the intense Texas climate. The extreme heat creates multiple aging seasons in a year, resulting in a darker, richer, and fuller bourbon; bolder than almost any other bourbon on the market.
Garrison Brothers Distillery, located in Hye, Texas, is the first and oldest legal whiskey distillery in Texas, and the first distillery outside of Kentucky to produce authentic, handcrafted, corn-to-cork bourbon whiskey — and only bourbon whiskey. Every drop is made from Texas-grown grain, distilled and aged under the blazing Hill Country sun, proofed by pure rainwater, and bottled by hand at the ranch. That last detail — proofed with rainwater harvested on the property — reflects a deliberate philosophy about what it means to make something truly local.
Master Distiller Donnis Todd has articulated that philosophy as clearly as anyone. Regarding the 2025 Guadalupe release, he put it plainly: "Water makes the whiskey. Guadalupe 2025 is bold and beautiful — shaped by Hye's wild Texas temperature swings, then proofed with rainwater we harvest on our 68-acre ranch. That devotion to clean environment is a big part of what makes Garrison Brothers legendary." It is the kind of thing that sounds like marketing copy until you taste the whiskey and realize it is simply a description of a real process.
Donnis Todd and the Art of the Hand-Selected Barrel
If Dan and Nancy Garrison built the institution, Donnis Todd is the craftsman who fills it with liquid. Master distiller Donnis Todd leads production of the brand's four core bourbon expressions, the annual limited Cowboy Bourbon release, and additional special editions each year. His work ethic and sensory precision are central to what distinguishes Garrison Brothers in a market saturated with premium claims.
Todd's approach to the Cowboy Bourbon — the brand's most coveted and highest-profile expression — illustrates his method. First released in 2013, Cowboy Bourbon helped put Garrison Brothers and the state of Texas on the national bourbon map with its memorable tasting notes and presentation. With every Cowboy Bourbon release, Garrison Brothers Master Distiller Donnis Todd uses his most prized and unique barrels, which he diligently hand-selects year after year. The standout barrels are set aside for further maturation in the extreme Texas climate resulting in some of the best and boldest bourbon in existence.
The 2025 vintage of Cowboy Bourbon underscores just how serious that process is. To craft the 2025 Cowboy Bourbon, master distiller Donnis Todd hand-selected various barrels aged for a minimum of six years in the distillery's warehouses. The bourbon was made using the brand's signature wheated bourbon mash bill of 74 percent corn, 15 percent wheat, and 11 percent malted barley. The result: clocking in at an eye-watering 73.2 percent ABV (146.4 proof), the 11th edition of Garrison Brothers' coveted Cowboy Bourbon is an unfiltered, cask-strength whiskey. On the nose, the 2025 Garrison Brothers Cowboy tasting notes include burnt wood, gun smoke, and toasted marshmallows. The taste is surprising and complicated — it oozes with black pepper and cooking spice, balanced by plum and apricot.
Scarcity drives the legend. With only 10,000 bottles available for 2025, this is the most sought-after award-winning expression in Garrison Brothers' portfolio. And the market has already ratified that scarcity with behavior: they currently have a waitlist of more than 15,000 just to volunteer on bottling days, and their Cowboy Bourbon normally sells out within hours of its release.
The Portfolio: More Than One Way to Drink Texas
Cowboy Bourbon: The Flagship Firecracker
The Cowboy Bourbon has anchored the brand's prestige positioning since its first release and remains the expression most likely to generate genuine scrambles at retail. Celebrating its 11th annual release, each bottle of the 2025 Cowboy Bourbon is hand-selected by Master Distiller Donnis Todd and aged for at least eight years to achieve an unparalleled depth of flavor. Bottled at cask strength, uncut, and unfiltered, this bourbon offers a taste so bold and sweet, it delivers an experience true to the spirit of the Texas Hill Country where it is crafted. At a suggested retail of $249.99, it occupies the upper reaches of the premium segment, and it earns the price every year.
Guadalupe: Port-Finished and Award-Loaded
For drinkers who want something rounder and more nuanced, the Guadalupe expression threads a different needle. In its fifth annual release, the story of Guadalupe kicked off in 2015 when Garrison Brothers procured a local winery's decades-old port casks to age four-year-old bourbon. Shortly after, Garrison Brothers Master Distiller Donnis Todd started sourcing for a more expansive port cask bourbon project. The magic maturation combination comes from four years in white American oak casks followed by two years in tawny port casks.
The results in the glass are lush and complex. This limited release bourbon is bottled at 107 proof and is made with a sweet mash of number one food-grade corn, soft red winter wheat, and barley, all sourced from Texas. Every bottle of Guadalupe is numbered and hand-dipped in copper color wax to finish. A sensuous, creamy liquid, Guadalupe's tasting notes include berry fruit, ripe plums, strawberry butter on flaky morning biscuits, toasted coffee bean notes, chocolate, and cinnamon. The competition awards have been relentless: most recently, 2024 Guadalupe received Platinum (97 points) and Spirit of the Year, Brown, from the 2025 San Diego International Wine and Spirits Challenge. It also received Double Platinum from the 2025 Ascot Awards and Double Gold from the 2025 Los Angeles Invitational Spirits Challenge.
For the first time with the 2025 release, Garrison Brothers is also releasing 1,000 bottles of Guadalupe Cask Strength Single Barrel, bottled at proofs ranging from 123.9 to 129.8, priced at $219.99. Garrison Brothers will donate $50 from every bottle of Guadalupe Cask Strength sold to Gulf Trust. The Gulf Trust initiative reflects how deeply the distillery ties its commercial strategy to environmental stewardship of the Texas landscape that makes its bourbon possible.
Laguna Madre: The Rarest Bottle in the Range
At the far end of the portfolio sits the Laguna Madre, a bottle that requires a level of patience — and a willingness to spend — that separates the casual collector from the devoted connoisseur. Garrison Brothers Laguna Madre matures eight full years before its release. It is first aged for four years in hand-selected white American oak barrels and then transferred into rare Limousin oak casks for another four years of aging in the Texas Hill Country heat. Limousin oak is sourced from the central forests in France and is prized for its powerful vanilla and lignin content. Trees from the forest can only be harvested when they are 120 years of age or older. Those casks impart something genuinely uncommon to the final liquid.
Bottled at 101 proof and cherry mahogany in color, the 2025 Laguna Madre shares tasting notes of vanilla bean, hazelnut, saltwater taffy, and milk chocolate. This rare bourbon has a creamy mouthfeel, much like an Almond Joy candy bar. With a suggested retail of $349.99 and only 3,000 total bottles released in 2025, Laguna Madre functions as much as a collector's piece as a drinking whiskey.
Competition Accolades That Back Up the Marketing
Bourbon brands make claims. Awards are the external check on whether those claims hold water. Garrison Brothers has passed that test at a remarkable rate. To date, Garrison Brothers has earned more than 800 awards across respected spirits competitions. The pace has not slowed. At the 2026 Ascot Awards, Single Barrel Cask Strength received Double Platinum while Cowboy Bourbon and Balmorhea each earned Platinum honors. Across recent competition cycles, the brand collected a Platinum Medal at the 2025 Chilled 100 Spirits Awards for Small Batch, Double Gold at the 2025 San Francisco World Spirits Awards for Single Barrel Cask Strength, and Platinum at the 2025 TAG Global Spirits Awards for Balmorhea.
That spread of awards — across expressions at very different price points and flavor profiles — matters because it suggests the quality is systemic rather than confined to one lucky barrel or one show-stopping limited release. It also gives the sales team at Southern Glazer's a legitimately powerful story to tell every on-premise and off-premise account they call on.
Institutional Partners and On-Premise Placement
Strategic multi-year partnerships have broadened the brand's commercial footprint. The distillery counts Oak View Group, Landry's, and Omni Hotels & Resorts among its business partners. These are not small accounts. Oak View Group operates and manages arenas and stadiums across the country. Landry's runs hundreds of restaurants under brands including Bubba Gump Shrimp, Chart House, and Morton's. Omni Hotels & Resorts operates luxury properties in major markets from Nashville to Los Angeles. Placement in those venues puts Garrison Brothers bourbon in front of hundreds of thousands of new consumers each year — people who might not seek it out at retail but will order it off a menu, enjoy it, and then look for it at a shop on the way home.
This is how premium spirits brands build the kind of broad cultural familiarity that turns regional darlings into national names. The distribution partnership with Southern Glazer's creates the pull-through at retail; the venue and hotel partnerships create the discovery moment that drives someone to the shelf in the first place.
Philanthropy as Part of the Brand's DNA
Not every bourbon brand gives away serious money, but Garrison Brothers has made charitable giving a structural pillar of how it operates rather than an occasional publicity exercise. Community philanthropy has also remained central to the operation. In 2018, Dan and Nancy Garrison founded the charitable initiative Good Bourbon for a Good Cause. More than $1.5 million has been raised to support Texas communities, veterans, and the state's natural and cultural heritage.
Annual fundraising events include Red, White & Bourbon, Winner Winner Chicken Dinner, Texas Independence Day, and Hye Steaks. These events do more than raise money — they bring thousands of people to the ranch in Hye and turn bourbon buyers into genuine community members. When a distillery raises over $137,000 for local volunteer fire departments from a single summer event, as Garrison Brothers did in 2025, it earns the kind of loyalty that no advertising budget can manufacture.
The environmental angle runs equally deep. Through the Laguna Madre release, the distillery supports FlatsWorthy, a fishing conservation coalition. Through the Guadalupe Cask Strength release, it channels funds to the Gulf Trust. These are not token gestures — they are woven into the product narrative at the label level, which means every buyer participates in the giving act whether they know it or not.
What the Numbers Mean for the Broader Bourbon Industry
According to Fortune Business Insights, the global bourbon market is poised for continued growth, driven by rising demand for premium, handcrafted spirits and limited-edition releases. Premium American whiskey in particular has outperformed the wider spirits category in recent years, as consumers increasingly trade up to higher-priced expressions.
Garrison Brothers sits squarely in the path of that tailwind. Its core portfolio occupies a price tier — roughly $90 to $350 at retail — that has historically outperformed both the entry-level and ultra-luxury segments. Consumers who trade up from a $35 bottle of Kentucky straight bourbon tend to land in the $80 to $120 range and stay there. Getting that consumer to try a $110 Texas small batch and enjoy it is a winnable play, especially when the liquid is backed by eight-hundred-plus awards and a distillery story that is genuinely compelling.
The 40%-plus growth in Texas also signals something that gets overlooked in national narratives: the home market still has room. Texas is the second-largest state by population in the country, with a drinking-age population that skews younger, wealthier, and more brand-conscious than national averages in many metros. The idea that Garrison Brothers has not yet maxed out its own backyard — and is still growing explosively there — suggests the brand's ceiling is considerably higher than its current sales footprint.
A Family Operation at a National Scale
There is a version of this story where growth forces compromises — where the demand to put more bottles on more shelves leads to cutting corners on grain sourcing, barrel selection, or aging time. Garrison Brothers has so far refused that trade. Every drop is made from Texas-grown grain, distilled and aged under the blazing Hill Country sun, proofed by pure rainwater, and bottled by hand at the ranch. That sentence still reads the same way it did when the brand was selling only in Texas.
Dan Garrison has been direct about what all of this means at a human level. "Nancy and I have always believed that bourbon is about bringing people together, and it means the world to us to share it with folks from Texas and far beyond," said Dan Garrison, founder of Garrison Brothers Distillery. "We're deeply grateful to every person who makes the trip to Hye to visit our distillery, buys our bourbon, and enjoys it." That is not a standard press-release quote from a brand that has forgotten where it came from.
Garrison Brothers said it will continue its national and international expansion while working to educate consumers about bourbon's status as a protected American spirit. That last commitment — education about bourbon's legal definition and American identity — reflects a longer game. Bourbon is one of the few product categories with genuine geographic and production protections under U.S. law, and a brand that leads with that education earns credibility with serious drinkers rather than chasing the casual cocktail consumer with whatever trend is running hot this month.
Looking Ahead: Growth With Roots
The story of Garrison Brothers in 2025 and 2026 is not really about the numbers, though the numbers are impressive. It is about a family operation in Hye, Texas — population roughly 100 — that built something so distinctly American and so genuinely Texan that the rest of the country is now coming to it rather than the other way around. The Southern Glazer's partnership, the venue and hotel placements, the competition medals — all of it is acceleration applied to a foundation that was already solid.
Garrison Brothers bourbon is sold across all 50 U.S. states and in five countries. For a distillery that did not exist twenty years ago and could not legally sell its first bottle until 2010, that is a remarkable sentence. The double-digit growth being reported now suggests the next chapter is going to be written at an even faster pace — and if the quality of the liquid stays where it is, the bourbon world will be paying close attention to what comes out of Hye, Texas, for years to come.
