Indiana's Most Iconic Fox Gets His Own Whiskey — Again
He has presided over decades of power dinners, championship celebrations, and quiet weeknight steaks from his perch inside one of the Midwest's most storied restaurants. He has watched governors, athletes, and business titans come and go. And now, for the second time in his long and improbable career, Winston A. Fox — the stuffed fox mascot of St. Elmo Steak House in Indianapolis — is lending his name to a bottle of whiskey worth clearing shelf space for.
Journeyman Distillery and Rare Saint Whiskey, a part of Huse Culinary, have partnered to create a new whiskey named after the iconic fox. The release is called Winston A. Fox: The Story of Six Fine Ryes — a distinctive blend of five Journeyman rye whiskeys and one exceptional rye from Rare Saint Whiskey, finished together for nine months in Madeira casks and bottled at 100 proof. It is the kind of collaborative, limited-edition release that American whiskey collectors have come to treat as calendar events, and with approximately 1,000 bottles hitting the market, demand is likely to outpace supply before the ink dries on the dinner receipts.
Two Indiana Institutions, One Bottle
The partnership at the center of this release brings together two enterprises that, while operating in different corners of Indiana's hospitality world, share a bone-deep commitment to craft and history. To understand why this bottle matters, you have to understand both of them.
St. Elmo Steak House: Over a Century of Indianapolis Legend
St. Elmo Steak House is a restaurant in the Wholesale District of Indianapolis, Indiana. Founded in 1902, it is the oldest steakhouse in Indianapolis. That kind of longevity doesn't happen by accident. It is the product of generations of ownership that understood the value of tradition, consistency, and a certain theatrical seriousness about the dinner table. Founder Joe Stahr named the restaurant after Erasmus of Formia — or St. Elmo — patron saint of sailors. Today the restaurant operates under the stewardship of Steve and Craig Huse through their Huse Culinary group, and it has only grown more influential with time. Its specialty shrimp cocktail has earned wide recognition in the American culinary scene, and in 2020 it was among the 25 highest-grossing independent restaurants in the U.S. with annual sales exceeding $21 million.
Winston A. Fox himself — the taxidermied red fox who occupies a prominent spot inside the restaurant's dining room — has become as integral to the St. Elmo identity as the horseradish-heavy shrimp cocktail that sends first-timers reaching for their water glass. Winston A. Fox is the stuffed fox mascot of St. Elmo Steak House in Indianapolis, and over the decades he has accumulated his own mythology, becoming the kind of character that regulars reference with genuine affection. Getting his name on a whiskey label is not a marketing gimmick — it is an acknowledgment that some symbols carry real weight.
Journeyman Distillery: Craft, Organic Integrity, and Indiana Roots
Since 2009, Journeyman, helmed by owner Bill Welter, has been producing award-winning whiskey, gin, vodka, and other spirits, first from its facility in Three Oaks, Michigan, and now from its complex in Valparaiso, Indiana. The brand's path to Valparaiso was deeply personal for Welter. Welter's family was from Indiana, and he actually wanted to open the original Journeyman in Valpo, but back in 2009, craft distilling wasn't legal in Indiana. Craft distilling is now much more commonplace, and when Journeyman was ready to expand, Indiana was a logical destination.
Journeyman Distillery at the American Factory in downtown Valparaiso is more than a landmark — it's a destination woven from history, hospitality, and modern craft. The former mid-1800s textile mill and later ANCO wiper blade factory has been thoughtfully restored, earning its place on the National Register of Historic Places. The physical space alone is worth the drive: the site first opened its doors in the 1860s with the Woolen Mill Company, and since its beginning the property has been home to several companies making everything from blankets, jeans, sleds, and wiper blades, to its current purpose of distilling whiskey and brewing beer.
Welter's investment in that space was not purely commercial. "I felt deep in my heart I needed to go back to Valpo and do this," Welter says. "Journeyman is an extension of what my dad and my grandpa created in Valpo. It's a direct part of their ideals in creating a long-term family business." Journeyman's Valpo location is a showpiece of industrial restoration. The distillery is also one of the few certified organic operations in the country, a distinction that shapes everything from its grain sourcing to its production philosophy.
What's in the Bottle: The Story of Six Fine Ryes
The name tells you most of what you need to know, but the details behind it are where things get genuinely interesting. The whiskey features six blends, adding Rare Saint's rye whiskey to the equation. Rare Saint Whiskey is itself part of the Huse Culinary family — the same restaurant group that operates St. Elmo — meaning the collaboration runs deeper than a simple licensing agreement. This is two organizations with overlapping ownership and shared values deciding to put something exceptional in a bottle together.
The six uniquely different rye whiskies are composed of whiskey aged 10, 8, 8, 7, 5 and 5 years, respectively, and were finished together for an additional nine months in Madeira casks. It is being released at 100 proof. Let's unpack that for a moment. The range of ages in this blend — from five years up to a decade — gives the blender an enormous toolkit to work with. Younger ryes tend to carry more raw grain character, spice, and energy, while older expressions bring structure, wood integration, and depth. A skilled blender can use that spectrum to create something more layered and complete than any single-age expression might achieve alone.
The Madeira cask finish, applied to all six components together for nine months, is the element that distinguishes this whiskey from a standard blended rye. Madeira — the fortified wine from the Portuguese archipelago — imparts a rich oxidative character, notes of dried fruit, caramel, and a characteristic nuttiness that plays extraordinarily well against the natural spice of rye. Nine months is long enough for meaningful influence without overwhelming the whiskey's underlying grain identity. The result, on paper at least, reads as a bottle that should offer complexity well beyond its $89.99 price point.
The result is a rich, layered whiskey created to celebrate nearly a decade of partnership between Journeyman and the Huse Culinary team behind St. Elmo Steak House. That context matters. This is not a whiskey assembled to meet a trend or capture market share. It is a commemorative product built on a long working relationship between people who care about what goes in the glass.
How the Debut Unfolded
The launch was structured around two dinner events that mirror the partnership itself — one anchored in Indianapolis at the restaurant that inspired the whole project, and one at Journeyman's home turf in northwest Indiana.
The whiskey debuted June 16 at a dinner at St. Elmo, followed by a dinner June 19 at Journeyman in Valparaiso. Both events were designed to put the whiskey in context — literally, physically, surrounded by the food and atmosphere that gave it meaning. The Valparaiso evening featured a multi-course steak dinner led by Journeyman Executive Chef Guy Meikle. Inspired by the classic steakhouse experience, guests enjoyed premium Linz steaks, thoughtfully paired pours, and the world-famous St. Elmo shrimp cocktail as a tribute to the collaboration.
There is something right about that menu. The shrimp cocktail traveling to Valparaiso for the occasion is a gesture that the people in the room would have appreciated — a piece of Indianapolis culinary DNA making the journey north to help christen a whiskey that connects both places. These are the kinds of details that separate a product launch from an actual event worth attending.
The people attending the dinner had a chance to buy bottles — the most direct route to securing one before they dispersed into the wider retail market. The bottles are $89.99 and available for purchase at all Huse Culinary restaurants, including 1933 Lounge restaurants in Carmel and Fishers. That distribution strategy keeps the whiskey connected to the hospitality ecosystem that created it, rather than scattering it across big-box retailers where context gets stripped away.
A Sequel That Improves on the Original
This is not the first time Winston A. Fox has appeared on a whiskey label, and knowing the history of that first release makes this one more interesting. This is the second whiskey featuring Winston A. Fox. Welter said several years ago there was a blend of Journeyman's five rye whiskeys — at that point, Rare Saint had not yet been brought into the mix.
The evolution from a five-rye blend to a six-rye blend is not incidental. The addition of Rare Saint's rye as a sixth component changes the flavor architecture of the blend, and crucially, it deepens the story. The first release was Journeyman telling its own story. This release is Journeyman and Huse Culinary telling a shared story — one that spans nearly a decade of dinners, collaborations, and presumably a great many bottles consumed together at 127 South Illinois Street.
The production numbers reflect a deliberate step-up in ambition. "The first one we had like 300 bottles, and this one will be a little more widely distributed, and I think we're going to have around 1,000 bottles," Welter said. Tripling the run while keeping the whiskey in the four-figure range of total production is a smart move for a brand that understands the value of scarcity. A thousand bottles sounds like more than enough until you start counting the St. Elmo regulars who have been waiting for this, the Journeyman loyalists in northwest Indiana and Chicago, and the collectors who track every limited release out of the American Midwest craft scene.
Welter said they are popular collector items. That assessment is likely conservative. Whiskeys that sit at the intersection of genuine craft production, regional storytelling, and limited availability have a strong track record in the secondary market. At $89.99 retail, anyone who secures a bottle has already made a defensible purchase on taste alone — anything beyond that is a bonus.
Bill Welter on What This Partnership Means
Welter has been building Journeyman for the better part of two decades, and the language he uses to describe the St. Elmo relationship reveals something about how he thinks about the brand. "It's been a great partnership with Huse over the years and certainly we view (St. Elmo) as Indiana's most iconic restaurant, so it's a real treat to be able to partner with it," Welter said.
The phrase "Indiana's most iconic restaurant" is not hyperbole. St. Elmo has occupied a defining role in Indianapolis civic and culinary life for more than 120 years. When a craft distillery calls that institution a partner — not a client, not a customer, but a genuine partner — it signals that the relationship operates at a different level than a simple branded product deal. The two organizations have been building something together for years, and Winston A. Fox: The Story of Six Fine Ryes is the most concrete expression of what that something looks like when you put it in a bottle.
The Broader Craft Whiskey Moment in Indiana
This release arrives at a moment when Indiana's craft spirits industry has matured considerably from the days when Welter couldn't even legally open a distillery in his home state. The regulatory environment has changed, consumer sophistication has grown, and the state now supports a legitimate craft whiskey identity that can hold its own against better-known producing regions.
Journeyman's trajectory illustrates that evolution clearly. The distillery was regularly earning awards for the best craft whiskies in America and, at the same time, was hitting the limits of its distilling capacity. That meant it was time to expand. The Valparaiso expansion gave Journeyman the infrastructure to grow without sacrificing the organic, small-batch identity that built the brand's reputation. The campus that now stands in downtown Valparaiso — with its restaurants, brewery, event spaces, and restored industrial bones — represents a vision of craft distilling as a community institution, not just a production facility.
Meanwhile, the broader American whiskey market is navigating a period of recalibration. The whisky market is consolidating, with producers adjusting output and leadership while rare releases continue to perform strongly in the secondary market. In that environment, the releases that break through are the ones with authentic stories and real craft behind them — not just fancy packaging and high prices. Winston A. Fox: The Story of Six Fine Ryes has both the story and the substance.
Rye whiskey specifically has benefited from sustained consumer interest. The category rewards producers who work with older stocks — the grain's spice and structure develop complexity with age that bourbon, with its sweeter grain bill, expresses differently. A blend reaching back a full decade in age, built from components sourced from two distinct whiskey programs and finished in Madeira casks, is exactly the kind of rye that converts skeptics and deepens the devotion of already-convinced drinkers.
What It Means for Collectors and Enthusiasts
For serious American whiskey collectors, this release checks most of the meaningful boxes. It comes from a certified organic craft distillery with a genuine track record of quality and award recognition. It carries a strong regional narrative that connects two beloved Indiana institutions. The blend incorporates aged rye stocks reaching up to ten years — real time in oak, not rushed to market. The Madeira finish is a legitimate differentiator, not a marketing afterthought. And the production run, at roughly 1,000 bottles, is small enough to create genuine scarcity without being so microscopic that finding a bottle becomes a full-time project.
The price point deserves attention. At $89.99, Winston A. Fox: The Story of Six Fine Ryes sits in a range where it can be opened and actually consumed without a crisis of conscience — and that is how Welter and the Huse team would want it. This is a whiskey built around dinners, conversation, and the pleasure of sharing something made with care. It is not a dust-collector for a glass cabinet.
That said, the first edition — with its 300-bottle run — has already established what this franchise can become. The pattern from here is predictable in the best way: each successive release will likely grow the blend's story by one more chapter, potentially adding new finishing woods, new component ages, or new collaborating distilleries. The jump from five ryes to six ryes is a structural decision that leaves room for further evolution, and Welter's comments about collectibility suggest he understands exactly what he is building.
The Table Is Set
There is a particular pleasure in whiskey that comes from knowing where it was made, why it was made, and who made it. Winston A. Fox: The Story of Six Fine Ryes delivers on all three counts with unusual clarity. The where is Valparaiso, Indiana, inside a building that has been producing things worth having since the 1860s. The why is a decade-long friendship between two organizations that have made Indiana hospitality something worth paying attention to. The who is Bill Welter and the Huse Culinary team, people who clearly understand that the best things take time.
Winston A. Fox himself — that stoic, glass-eyed sentinel on the wall at St. Elmo — has seen a lot in his years watching over the dining room at 127 South Illinois Street. He has seen celebrations and defeats, deals made and deals dissolved, friendships formed over shrimp cocktail and steaks that cost more than they should and taste worth every cent. Now he has a whiskey that does justice to all of it. At 100 proof and nine months in Madeira casks, it should hold up just fine over a long dinner.
