Timber Creek Distillery is Florida’s most awarded craft distillery, and it sits on a 240-acre family farm in Crestview, about an hour north of Destin. It is a true grain-to-glass operation: grain is milled, mashed, fermented, distilled, aged, blended, and bottled by hand on site. No bulk liquid, no sourced barrels, no shortcuts.
Quick Facts
- Founded: 2014 by Aaron Barnes and Camden Ford
- Location: 6451 Lake Ella Rd, Crestview, FL 32539
- Property: 240-acre family farm, off-grid
- Process: Single-grain distillation and the proprietary PureBlend® blending system
- Equipment: Traditional copper pot still with a bell-shaped pot head and a Scottish-style worm condenser
- Hardware: 40+ competition medals
- Tour and tasting: $20 to $30 per person
- Dogs: Welcome
Two Neighbors and a Very Long Way of Doing Things
Timber Creek began in 2014 with two neighbors in rural Okaloosa County who shared a property line and an opinion: that North Florida grain, traditional equipment, and enough patience could produce whiskey worth arguing about. Camden Ford brought the engineering. Aaron Barnes became the master distiller. Together they built the place from the ground up rather than buying into an existing facility, which is why the distillery reads less like a factory and more like a working laboratory.
The decisions they made early on were mostly the inconvenient ones. Grain comes from local North Florida farms, including red soft winter wheat, black rye, corn, and barley. Water is drawn straight from the aquifer beneath the Panhandle and used untreated through fermentation and distillation. Whiskey goes into new American white oak with a No. 3 char and then sits through Florida summers, which are considerably less forgiving than Kentucky ones. You can read the longer version of the story on the About Timber Creek Distillery page.
One Grain at a Time
Here is the part that separates Timber Creek from nearly everyone else on a Florida shelf. Most distilleries combine corn, wheat, rye, and barley into a single mash and distill it as one batch. Timber Creek ferments and distills each grain separately, evaluates each one on its own, and only then blends the finished components. That is the PureBlend® process, and it turns blending into a design tool instead of a correction at the end of the line.
The still matters just as much. Timber Creek runs a copper pot still with a Scottish-style worm condenser, a coiled copper tube submerged in cool water that condenses vapor slowly and holds onto the grain oils that give a spirit body and aroma. Column stills are faster and built for volume and neutrality. Pot stills are built for flavor. The distillery chose the slow one on purpose, and explains exactly why on the Our Distillery page.
The Medal Wall
More than 40 competition medals have come back to Crestview, from judging panels including The Fifty Best, the North American Bourbon & Whiskey Competition, and the Denver International Spirits Competition. FloridaRentals.com has ranked Timber Creek the number one distillery in Florida.
The distillery has also turned up in print. Timber Creek appears in Carla Harris DeVito’s The Spirit of Rye (2021), in Fodor’s American Spirits (2024), and in Whiskey Lore’s distillery travel guide series.
What a Visit Actually Looks Like
The Distillery Tour & Tasting runs $20 to $30 per person depending on whether you add the cocktail experience. A guide walks you through milling, fermentation, the pot still, and the barrel room, and the tour ends with a full tasting of Florida-made vodka, rum, whiskey, and gin. It takes about as long as a leisurely lunch and explains more about whiskey than most people pick up in a decade of drinking it.
If you want to go further, book the Bourbon Blending Experience. Guests taste the individual corn, wheat, rye, and barley whiskeys, then build their own custom bourbon-style blend and find out how dramatically a small ratio change rearranges the whole glass. It is the single best argument for why the distillery bothers to distill grains separately in the first place.
There is more on the property than spirits. The Wine & Chocolate Tasting pours selections from Bacigalupi Vineyards, the historic family-run winery in California’s Russian River Valley, paired with chocolate-dipped fruit. On select weekends, Pizza Saturdays bring wood-fired pizza and cocktails out into the farm setting. The full slate lives on the Tastings & Experiences page.
The Bottles
The lineup runs wider than most craft houses attempt. On the whiskey side there is Florida Whiskey, built on a wheated profile, the rye-forward Southern Reserve Florida Whiskey, and an American single malt made from 100 percent barley. Beyond whiskey there is a wheat-based vodka, a gin built around honeysuckle, lavender, fennel, and juniper, and a barrel-aged rum distilled from evaporated cane syrup.
The complete range is on the Spirits page.
Weddings, Corporate Escapes, and Groups
The property hosts weddings, corporate retreats, birthdays, reunions, and holiday parties, with access to the vineyard, the distillery, the tasting room, and a dedicated event space. Groups tend to book it for the same reason: a working farm with a still in it beats a hotel ballroom by a wide margin. Details are on the Private Events page.
Your Name on the Bottle
Timber Creek also runs one of the most flexible private label programs in the state, and it is real production rather than generic white-label sourcing. Restaurants, resorts, nonprofits, corporate gift programs, and new brands can have custom vodka, rum, gin, whiskey, or bourbon distilled, blended, bottled, and labeled in house. Pricing starts at $20 per bottle for vodka, rum, and gin and $40 per bottle for whiskey and bourbon, with a 60-bottle minimum. Label printing happens on site, which is why turnaround times stay short and minimums stay low.
Start a project: Private Label Spirits at Timber Creek Distillery or call (408) 439-0973.
Plan the Trip
Crestview is an easy inland detour from anywhere on the coast, and it gives an Emerald Coast itinerary a different rhythm than another afternoon on the sand. Guests come up from Destin, Fort Walton Beach, 30A, Navarre, and Pensacola, spend half a day on the farm, and drive back with bottles.
- Address: 6451 Lake Ella Rd, Crestview, FL 32539
- Phone: (408) 439-0973
- Web: timbercreekdistillery.com
- Book a tour: Distillery Tour & Tasting
- Plan an event or private label project: Contact Timber Creek
Must be 21 or older to taste.