Hochatown Distilling Company: Beautifully Balanced Oklahoma Bourbon
Out in the middle of Southeastern Oklahoma sits an oasis. That’s how Tommy McDaniel, co-owner of Hochatown Distilling Company (HDC), describes Hochatown, which is more than three hours from Dallas and four from Oklahoma City. With scenery like the Ouachita National Forest, Beavers Bend State Park, Cedar Bluff and Mountain Fork River all nearby, the area's natural beauty may rival locales like the Grand Canyon.
Yet McDaniel, a chemical engineer by education, wants the highlight of anyone’s trip to his secluded paradise to be something as simple as taking a sip of his pure Oklahoma bourbon. As one of the owners of HDC, McDaniel knows that once someone tastes the complex flavor of its bourbon, they’ll immediately know they’re tasting something special.
“We decided early on that bourbon is a very American/Americana type product. It's been around since the foundations of the nation and has evolved with the nation,” he says. “And the mash bill that we use is 80 percent corn, 10 percent malted barley and 10 percent rye. The reason we chose that is because we wanted a full, balanced flavor in your bourbon profile. Sweetness from the corn is on the front of your tongue. You're going to move over into some notes of what you get on the side, nutmeg, and a few of those notes. And then on the back of your tongue, you get that spiciness of a rye. And so you get a full, balanced flavor when you drink our bourbon.”
The secrets to the flavor of HDC’s bourbon are some of the same factors that might make people overlook it. Their location, off the radar for many, provides the perfect elements to make HDC bourbon a truly flavorful punch to the taste buds. “One [factor] is our water. Iron is the enemy of distilling,” says HDC partner Mitchell McDaniel. “It’s like Superman’s kryptonite. Our water source does not have iron in it. We pull out of Broken Bow Lake and Mountain Fork River. We got really fortunate in a couple of things, and one of them was the water.”
The second item is the climate in Hochatown, which helps the bourbon age well. “Two things to consider are your average temperature, annual temperature, and your humidity levels. We have four distinct seasons down in Southeast Oklahoma, and we enjoy the benefits of Texas heat,” Mitchell says. “The heat expands the liquid, drives it into the barrels. Reactions that have to take place that mellow out the bourbon have to occur. Those are all temperature functions, depending upon the heat of the juice that's in the barrel.”
Tommy and Mitchell McDaniel, a chemist with a 30-year career in food science, are half of the founding partners of Hochatown Distilling Company, 41. N. Lukfata Trail, Hochatown, in McCurtain County. The rest of the foursome includes brother Mark McDaniel, a property developer with a track record of success, and longtime friend and experienced distiller Nathan Jewell. Each of them brings his own unique talents to the company, which have allowed HDC to become the first distillery in the eastern portion of the state and the first to barrel legal whiskey in the former Indian Territory of Oklahoma.
“We are in a tourist market. We manage Broken Bow vacation cabins and Hidden Hills cabins, so our family have been some of the founders in cabin rentals and land development,” Tommy McDaniel says. “We knew to continue on, we needed more activities and more things for people to do in the area. So we started internalizing and looking at what skill sets we have that we can bring to the table. And we like to drink bourbon and have a good time. So we decided we were going to start a whiskey still and we would do moonshine, maybe bourbon.”
It wasn’t until the group started studying Oklahoma’s laws concerning distilleries that they decided to go all-in on bourbons. “We were pretty well determined to keep moving forward knowing it takes years to get a bourbon out,” Tommy says. “But we were here for the long haul. That’s what started the initial process of distilling.”
HDC broke ground on building the distillery in 2015. It took more than a year to not only finish the construction but also get the right federal and state licenses. It wasn’t until the fall of 2016 that they perfected their distilling technique and mash bill (blend of grains).
“In September of 2016 we put up our very first barrel,” Mitchell McDaniel says. “We did not sell any product until 2019, [when] our first bourbon was two and half years old. We released our first product, which was a small batch bourbon. We could have sold vodka early, because it doesn’t have to be aged, but we wanted our first release to be a bourbon. We wanted to be known as a bourbon house.”
Before it could be officially known as a bourbon house, the company had to maneuver its way through complicated Oklahoma laws that were holding the distillers back. After three attempts to get the statutes changed, they finally made headway in the recent legislative session. “We began to work with some legislators over the last couple of years to get language put into the statues that would allow us to sell directly,” Mitchell says. “There were some hurdles to the constitution; in our distiller's license, we had language added that would allow us to sell directly out of our premises.”
Despite roadblocks, Mitchell likes the path HDC has been on since they opened up. As the brand has spread throughout the region, he calls it managed growth. “When you go back to when our first bourbons were aged up and ready, our production was a lot less than it is today. So we developed these markets in Oklahoma to start with. Once we're now about three and a half to four years removed from when our production was really ramping up, and we were putting up a lot more barrels, we branched out into the Texas markets,” he says. “Liquor King is the first store to pick us up, and they've got three locations in the Allen (Texas) area. We've rolled out starting in November with a group called Goody Goody. They've got about 24 stores, I believe, plus some other stores under a different name, so we'll be rolling into those. So our growth has been a managed amount, but we've got the right trajectory.”
Currently, the company’s product list includes small batch and single barrel bourbon, and its 80 proof Spearpoint Vodka.
HDC produces around 3,000 bottles a month on the bourbon side of the business. That’s about the volume they plan to produce for the next four years, until the next phase of the plan comes to fruition.
Hochatown Distilling Company has already acquired ten more acres of land on which the partners plan to build a bigger distillery. Mitchell said that will allow the company to ramp up its production from 10 barrels to 100. “All of a sudden your costs go through the roof, so we've got to put together different cash flow schemes to help fund that while we're waiting for four years for those bourbons to start coming off,” he says. “So, five years from today, I would say that we should be rolling out that production into a more regional-type setting where we're in several states in the area. And then hopefully from there, we'll continue with a decent growth curve to get 10 years from now and hopefully distributed throughout all of the U.S.''