Three Rivers Distilling Company: the distillery returns

2016 — present

Two airmen and a still: Fort Wayne's making record resumes on March 28, 2016, when Three Rivers Distilling Company began operations at 224 East Wallace Street, just south of downtown, in a 7,100-square-foot brick building that had first been occupied by the Holsum Bakery from the 1940s into the 1970s. The founders were Travis Kraick and Stephen Blevins, friends who had met serving in the 122nd Fighter Wing of the Indiana Air National Guard; Aaron Pence joined as co-owner and the company's marketer. The idea, as Fort Wayne Magazine tells it, came to Kraick on contract work in Iowa, where his wife found the Mississippi River Distilling Company giving daily tours — "Why isn't there something like this in Fort Wayne?" — and Blevins, asked by phone if he would open a distillery here, answered, "I've been waiting for someone to ask me that very question." The two taught themselves the science from blogs, distillery visits and conferences, bought a first still, and set it up in a garage before the Wallace Street plant was fitted out. On February 13, 2018, the company opened the restaurant and bar attached to the distillery.

The spirits: The production line, as the company's press and the Fort Wayne press record it, runs to Harvester Vodka; Summit City Gin; River City Rum; a coffee liqueur made with Fort Wayne's Utopian Coffee; and the whiskeys — Franklin B. Rye, a wheated bourbon sold as Early Bourbon, and the signature "122," an unaged corn whiskey bottled at 122 proof and named in honor of the 122nd Fighter Wing where the founders served. Aaron Pence's own summary to a local interviewer in 2017 was that the bourbon had been named the best in Indiana and the vodka, gin and 122 had won national awards; the company's federal distilling permit is IN-S-20025. The plant runs a closed-loop cooling system the company says cuts its water use by some ninety percent, and its spent grain goes back to local farmers as feed — grain-to-bottle production from Indiana grain, run as the founders describe it, as an engineer's distillery.

The superlative, and its correction: Three Rivers is described by the distillery itself, and by nearly all the press, as the first distillery in northeast Indiana — or the first legal distillery in Fort Wayne — since Prohibition. Fort Wayne Magazine's account dropped the qualifier and called it "the first-ever legal distillery in Allen County." That stronger claim is wrong on this section's own record: the Rockhill brothers' still of the 1820s and Comparet & Kiser's canal-side distillery of the canal era, both printed above from the county's standard histories, were Allen County distilleries a century and more before Prohibition. The company's defensible claim is the one it usually makes — first since the dry years — and it is claim enough: when the Wallace Street stills were lit in 2016, legal distilling returned to Fort Wayne after an absence of at least ninety-eight years.

Sources:

1. Fort Wayne Engineers Club, Engineers' News, September 2018 — the May 2018 tour summary: Three Rivers Distilling Co. at 224 East Wallace Street "began operations on March 28, 2016," in the building "first occupied by Holsum Bakery from the 1940's until the 1970's"; cofounders Travis Kraick and Stephen Blevins; "the first distillery in Northeast Indiana since Prohibition"; the restaurant and bar opened February 13, 2018.
2. "Made in Fort Wayne," Fort Wayne Magazine (fortwayne.com) — the Mississippi River Distilling tour that prompted Kraick's question, the phone call to Blevins, the garage still, the East Wallace Street opening, the vodka, gin, rum and 122-proof corn whiskey named for the 122nd Fighter Wing — and the unqualified "first-ever legal distillery in Allen County" phrasing corrected in the entry.
3. Whisky Advocate, "For Veterans, Distilling Is a New Way to Serve" (November 6, 2017) — Kraick and Blevins as 122nd Fighter Wing veterans, Aaron Pence as co-owner and marketing manager, and the distillery "founded in March 2016."
4. Fort Wayne MoneySaver and the Keri Garcia interview with Aaron Pence (2017) — the product list: Harvester Vodka, Three Rivers Wheated Bourbon, Summit City Gin, River City Rum, coffee liqueur, "122" unaged corn whiskey, Franklin B. Rye Whiskey; Pence's "first legal distillery since prohibition in Fort Wayne" phrasing and his account of the awards.
5. Distillery.news directory listing — Three Rivers Distilling Company, 224 East Wallace Street, business start 2016, federal permit IN-S-20025; The Bourbon Flight (2023) — the closed-loop cooling system and spent grain returned to local farmers as feed.