Tennessee Hills Distillery Named Official Spirits Partner of TN250 — And Its First Whiskey Is the One the State Wanted in the Bottle
There are roughly 100 distilleries operating across Tennessee, each with a story to tell about heritage, craft, and the land underfoot. Only one of them got the phone call from the state. Tennessee Hills Distillery, the largest privately-owned brewing and distillation company in Tennessee, has released its first Tennessee Whiskey, which has been designated the official spirits product for TN250 — the state of Tennessee's initiative to celebrate America's 250th anniversary. That distinction alone should tell you something about how seriously Tennessee takes both its whiskey and its history, and how deeply this particular East Tennessee outfit is woven into both.
The selection is not just a marketing badge. Tennessee Hills is the only distillery in the state selected to represent the TN250 program with a commemorative bottle. Out of every operation from Memphis to Mountain City, one family's distillery — rooted in Jonesborough and scaled up to a full industrial campus in Bristol — earned that singular honor. Understanding why requires a look back well before 2026, past the founding of Tennessee Hills itself, past the Civil War, and all the way to the ridgelines of the Appalachian Highlands where the Callahan family first learned to make whiskey.
The TN250 Program and What It Actually Means
The TN250 initiative is the state of Tennessee's answer to America's Semiquincentennial — the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. The Tennessee Commission for the United States Semiquincentennial was created to plan, encourage, develop, and coordinate the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, and recognize Tennessee's integral role in that event and the impact of its people on the nation's past, present, and future. It is a full statewide apparatus, not a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and its scope runs from historical preservation to community grants to cultural programming.
The commission promotes an inclusive statewide celebration and educational commemoration of America's 250th by interpreting and preserving Tennessee's unique stories, objects, landmarks, and places across the diverse state that defined who we are as Tennesseans and Americans. That framing — stories, objects, landmarks, places — is revealing. The commission is not simply throwing a party. It is making an argument about what Tennessee contributed to the republic, and it wants those contributions to stand for something.
Tennessee America 250 celebrates and commemorates America's 250th Anniversary by interpreting and preserving the unique Tennessee stories, objects, landmarks, and places that have defined who we are as Tennesseans and Americans. When the commission reached for a spirits product to sit alongside that mission, the choice of Tennessee Hills Distillery was not arbitrary. The Callahan family's story maps almost perfectly onto the founding-era history TN250 is trying to honor.
Eleven Generations: The Callahan Family and the Roots of Appalachian Distilling
Most craft distilleries in America have been operating for somewhere between five and fifteen years. Tennessee Hills is a younger company in its formal commercial incarnation, but the people behind it have been making whiskey for a span of time that stretches back to the pre-Revolutionary period. The Callahan family has been making spirits for eleven generations — long before anyone called it "craft." Their roots trace back to the Scots-Irish settlers and Overmountain Men who crossed the Appalachian Highlands, fought at Kings Mountain, and built a way of life that still echoes through every bottle they make.
The Battle of Kings Mountain, fought in October of 1780, is one of the turning points of the Southern Campaign of the Revolutionary War. The Overmountain Men who marched to that fight were backcountry settlers from the valleys of what is now East Tennessee and western North Carolina — resourceful, ornery, and largely self-sufficient in the mountains. Distilling was part of that self-sufficiency, and the Callahan family carried that tradition forward through every generation that followed. It is a lineage that makes the TN250 selection feel less like a corporate sponsorship and more like a natural reunion between family history and national commemoration.
Tennessee Hills Distillery was founded by Stephen and Jessica Callahan in 2014 in Jonesborough, Tennessee's oldest town. It is situated in a historically significant building known as the Salt House, which played a pivotal role during the Civil War due to its proximity to the railway and its use as a storage facility for salt, a precious commodity at the time. The choice of the Salt House as the original home for Tennessee Hills was not accidental. The building carries weight, and the Callahans knew it.
Stephen and Jessica Callahan are Washington County natives and can't imagine calling anywhere else home. The Callahans graduated from college with degrees in Biology and Chemistry, but decided a 9-to-5 in a white lab coat was not the end goal. Stephen's heart lay in crafting spirits. The Callahans stopped at nothing to make their dreams a reality. They put in long hours, doing everything the business required, even making stills. That detail — hand-building their own stills — is the kind of fact that separates operators from artisans. You do not fabricate your own copper equipment because it is cheaper. You do it because you understand the machinery at a fundamental level and because the work itself matters to you.
From Jonesborough to Bristol: The Scale-Up Story
As Tennessee Hills grew from a small batch distillery in Jonesborough to its mass production facility in Bristol, TN, the company realized the industry was booming, but education on brewing and distilling was lacking in the region. When the company purchased its "Brewstillery" in 2021, its founder and president, Stephen Callahan, approached East Tennessee State University about creating an education program for the field.
In 2020, the Callahans partnered with Scott and Daphene Andrew to scale Tennessee Hills Distillery. This collaboration led to a significant expansion project in Bristol, Tennessee, aimed at creating the state's largest craft distillery. The new facility features advanced, fully automated systems capable of producing a significant volume of Tennessee Whiskey and American Single Malt per week, alongside a canning line and a bottling line. This is not a weekend hobby scaled up — it is a serious industrial operation that still carries craft DNA at its center.
The Bristol campus, located just four miles from Hard Rock Bristol, represents a $30 million investment and has cemented Tennessee Hills' position as something genuinely uncommon in the American spirits landscape. Tennessee Hills is more than just a taproom — it is the largest privately owned Brewstillery in North America. The range of what happens under that roof stretches from grain-to-glass whiskey production to craft beer, and the facility operates at a scale that would have been unimaginable for Stephen Callahan when he was hand-building stills in Jonesborough a little over a decade ago.
According to Callahan, the expansion came together quickly: "It was almost like an immediate 'Yes.' Within the very next semester, we launched the program with those guys." He described the range of the operation: "You can go from Jonesborough, which is more of what I would call a micro-distillery, to Johnson City, which is a microbrewery, all the way up to one of those automated facilities in the country, right here in Bristol, Tennessee." Few American distillery companies can claim that breadth of operation, and even fewer can trace it back to a pre-Revolutionary distilling heritage.
The Whiskey Itself: A Wheated Expression Built for a Historic Moment
The release that earned Tennessee Hills its TN250 designation is not a marketing afterthought. Tennessee Hills released its first Tennessee Whiskey — a wheated expression crafted to honor 250 years of Callahan distilling heritage and the TN250 celebration. The decision to go wheated is significant. Wheat as the secondary grain in a whiskey mash bill tends to produce a softer, rounder flavor profile compared to rye-forward expressions. Where rye brings spice and bite, wheat opens up space for fruit, vanilla, and a longer, gentler finish. For a commemorative whiskey meant to be savored rather than challenged, it is a technically smart choice.
The whiskey was proofed down to 96 — or 48% ABV — a figure that carries its own deliberate meaning. According to reporting on the release, the whiskey was proofed to that specific point to represent the year Tennessee was established as a state: 1796. That kind of embedded history in the production details is exactly the sort of thing whiskey enthusiasts appreciate, and it fits the TN250 mission of weaving Tennessee's founding narrative into something tangible.
The spirit was distilled using a unique yeast strain and filtered through sugar maple charcoal using the traditional Lincoln County Process — the technique that legally distinguishes Tennessee Whiskey from bourbon. It was then aged in white oak barrels. The master distiller overseeing production from grain to glass ensured that every step of the production chain was handled in-house at the Bristol facility, maintaining the integrity of the release.
What Makes Tennessee Whiskey Different — And Why It Matters Here
The Lincoln County Process is not merely a legal technicality. It is a genuine production step that changes the character of the spirit. Filtering new make whiskey through a thick bed of sugar maple charcoal before barrel entry mellows the harshness of the fresh distillate, strips away certain congeners, and imparts a subtle sweetness and smoothness that carries through aging. The result is a whiskey that, even at cask strength, tends to present with less of the sharp edge you find in many young bourbons.
As Callahan explained during a tour of the facility, he breaks down what makes Tennessee whiskey different from bourbon: you can make bourbon anywhere, but Tennessee whiskey only happens here. That geographic and procedural exclusivity is part of what makes the TN250 designation so fitting. A Kentucky bourbon honoring Tennessee's founding would carry a certain irony. This release is genuinely, legally, and culturally of this specific place.
Stephen Callahan on Family, Legacy, and What This Bottle Closes
When Callahan talks about the TN250 whiskey, he does not reach for the language of marketing. He reaches for family. "Two hundred and fifty years ago, my ancestors Joel and John Callahan marched over these mountains with the Overmountain Men to fight at the Battle of Kings Mountain," he said in a written statement accompanying the release. "They brought the craft of distilling with them from Cork County, Ireland. Eleven generations later, we're still making whiskey in these hills. This bottle closes a circle that started before this country did."
That is not a brand story invented in a conference room. The Callahan family's connection to the Overmountain Men is a historical fact that predates the United States itself, and the whiskey sitting inside that TN250 commemorative bottle is the direct descendant — by eleven generations of practice and refinement — of the spirits those men made in the mountains of East Tennessee. The TN250 commission recognized something real when it selected this distillery.
Education, Community, and the ETSU Partnership
The TN250 whiskey is the most visible chapter in Tennessee Hills' recent story, but it is not the only one that speaks to the company's ambitions beyond the production floor. As the Bristol facility came online and the operation scaled, Callahan and his team turned their attention to what happens when a regional industry grows faster than its trained workforce can keep up with.
"We helped build out the curriculum. We funded the professor; we funded a lot of materials. We also give them the space right inside our 'brewstillery' brew house to be able to come in and brew some small batch beers, do some small batch distilling, really kind of get some hands-on experimentation of the ground floor of what somebody could do in this industry," said Callahan.
"That's our goal as Tennessee Hills — to really keep putting those roots down to the community and giving back to the community and also workforce development." The ETSU program lives within the university's Department of Appalachian Studies, a placement that is not incidental. The academic home for a distilling and brewing minor signals something about how Tennessee Hills and ETSU both view this work — not as vocational training stripped of context, but as the continuation of a regional cultural practice with deep historical roots.
Dr. Ron Roach, department chair, explained the philosophy plainly: "You know, moonshine has been used to make fun of Appalachians and wanted to recognize it as an important part of cultural heritage in this region and an important art form." That reframing — moving distilling from punchline to heritage art — is central to what Tennessee Hills has been doing across all its operations, not just in the classroom.
The curriculum starts with a foundations class taught by a professional in the field. It has been taught by professionals working at Tennessee Hills and at Yee Haw, meaning students receive practical knowledge alongside lectures on the history of distilling and brewing in Appalachia and its roots in Scotland and Ireland. That connection to Scotland and Ireland is not incidental — it is the same Scots-Irish heritage that brought distilling across the Atlantic in the first place, the same heritage that produced the Overmountain Men, and the same heritage that now shows up in a TN250 commemorative bottle.
The Commemorative Bottle and What It Represents for Collectors
For whiskey drinkers who track commemorative releases, the TN250 bottle from Tennessee Hills occupies a rare category. It is not a limited release tied to a distillery anniversary or a barrel pick from a celebrity endorser. It is an official state-designated product marking one of the most significant milestone anniversaries in American history, produced by a company whose family lineage predates the nation it is commemorating.
Bottles tied to genuinely historic occasions — and backed by production credentials rather than marketing budgets — tend to hold meaning that outlasts the moment of release. The TN250 designation gives this whiskey a provenance argument that no amount of branding can manufacture after the fact. This bottle exists because the state of Tennessee looked at its distillery landscape and decided that one company's story was representative enough of Tennessee's role in founding the republic to carry that weight officially.
The wheated mash bill, the Lincoln County Process filtration, the white oak barrel aging, and the proofing to 96 all combine to produce a whiskey that drinks as a genuine Tennessee product rather than a costumed edition of something else. Enthusiasts who open this bottle years from now will be drinking something that was made at the largest privately owned Brewstillery in North America, by a family that has been at this for eleven generations, during the year the country turned 250. That context does not wash out.
The Broader Landscape: Tennessee Whiskey's Moment
The timing of this release lands during an inflection point for Tennessee whiskey as a category. While bourbon's decades-long boom has pushed Kentucky distillers to expand capacity at rates not seen since Prohibition's repeal, Tennessee whiskey has been building its own distinct identity — one that leans into the Lincoln County Process as a point of differentiation rather than treating it as a footnote to bourbon's story.
Tennessee Hills' selection as the TN250 spirits partner is a signal that the state itself sees its whiskey identity as something worth projecting nationally. The TN250 initiative draws visitors, media attention, and cultural interest from across the country, and associating that attention with a specific whiskey product — one made by a Tennessee family at a Tennessee facility using Tennessee methods — is a deliberate act of regional branding at the highest level.
The TN250 program points to the significance of places like Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River, recognized as one of the most significant early settlement areas on the western frontier. There, in 1772, residents established the Watauga Association, recognized as the first majority-rule system of American democratic government. That East Tennessee geography — the same mountains and river valleys where Callahan's ancestors made whiskey and marched to war — is the landscape TN250 is trying to make legible to the rest of the country. A bottle of Tennessee Hills whiskey is, in that context, a piece of that interpretive project.
Visiting Tennessee Hills: Three Locations, One Story
For anyone who wants to engage with this release beyond the bottle, Tennessee Hills operates across three locations in East Tennessee, each offering a different window into the operation. The Jonesborough distillery is located in Tennessee's oldest town, housed in the historic Salt House building constructed in the 1840s and used to store salt during the Civil War era. The building itself is a document of East Tennessee history, and distilling inside it is an act of deliberate continuity.
Visitors at the Jonesborough location have the opportunity to witness every aspect of the liquor-making process — from mashing and fermenting to final distillation in hand-made copper stills built by the Tennessee Hills team — as well as the bottling and packaging processes. The facility also provides a tasting bar where customers can experience and purchase all Tennessee Hills products.
The Bristol location operates at a different scale entirely. Four miles from Hard Rock Bristol sits a $30 million campus built on eleven generations of craftsmanship. The campus combines the production facility with a full hospitality experience — handmade spirits, small-batch beer, Appalachian BBQ, and live music. That combination is not accidental. Tennessee Hills is not trying to be a clinical production showcase. It is trying to be a place where people spend an afternoon, eat well, drink something worth drinking, and leave with a clearer sense of what this part of the country produced and why it matters.
Callahan himself has described the Bristol facility as "the Willy Wonka factory of booze" — the largest brewery and distillery under one roof in North America. The comparison is playful but accurate in spirit: the scale and variety of what happens inside the Bristol Brewstillery genuinely surprises people who show up expecting a modest craft operation.
What This Selection Tells the Industry
The designation of Tennessee Hills as the TN250 official spirits partner carries implications beyond the commemorative bottle. It signals that state governments are beginning to recognize distilleries as legitimate vehicles for heritage storytelling — not just as tax-revenue generators or tourism draws, but as cultural institutions capable of carrying historical meaning in a tangible, consumable form.
That is a meaningful shift. For much of the modern craft spirits era, distilleries have marketed themselves primarily on flavor profiles, production methods, and founder personalities. The TN250 partnership suggests a different framework — one where a distillery's story, lineage, and regional rootedness are treated as public goods worth institutional support.
Tennessee Hills prides itself on embodying the spirit of the Volunteer State, combining time-honored craftsmanship with modern innovation. Its mission is to craft exceptional spirits that celebrate the heritage, community, and natural beauty of Tennessee's Appalachian Highlands. That mission statement reads differently after the TN250 designation. It is no longer just marketing language — it is the reason the state called.
For American whiskey enthusiasts who have been tracking the evolution of Tennessee whiskey as a category distinct from bourbon, the TN250 release from Tennessee Hills is worth serious attention. It is a wheated Tennessee Whiskey made by a family that has been at this craft for eleven generations, officially designated by the state to represent one of the most historically significant anniversaries the country has ever marked. The liquid in the bottle is genuinely good. The story behind it is even better.
