Bone Spirits Distillery

Bone Spirits was established in 2010 in Smithville, Texas, by Jeff Peace, with Joe Alecci overseeing much of the early day-to-day distilling operation. Before starting the company, Peace had worked as general counsel for Sidney Frank Importing Company, the US spirits business associated with brands including Jägermeister and Grey Goose.

From the beginning, Bone Spirits followed what it called a “farm-to-bottle” approach. Grain was sourced as locally as possible, with cooking, fermentation and distillation carried out at the Smithville facility, while spent grain was returned to local farms for livestock feed, compost or fertilizer. The early range included Smiths Vodka, Fitch’s Goat Moonshine and Corn Whiskey, Moody June Gin and, from 2015, Bone Bourbon.

The distillery also produced BŌN Akevitt, released in 2016 during the period when Norwegian-born distiller Jarle Lillemoen worked at Bone Spirits. The aquavit became one of the more unusual products in a range otherwise centred on American grain spirits and gin. Contemporary accounts show that it was served alongside the rest of the distillery’s portfolio in the Smithville tasting room.

By the end of the 2010s, Bone Spirits had changed its business model. The public tasting-room operation and the company’s own consumer brands were phased out, but the distillery itself did not close or change ownership. In 2020, the company clarified that it had stopped selling its own brands and was instead producing spirits for other distilleries. Today Bone Spirits focuses primarily on bulk whiskey production, carrying out cooking, fermentation and distillation in-house and offering whiskey ranging from new distillate to mature bourbon, including corn-and-rye, corn-and-wheat and four-grain mash bills.